Watson Lecture: Ken Farley Explores Perseverance Rover's Mission on Mars
On Wednesday, March 10, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, Ken Farley, the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geochemistry in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS), continues the 2020–2021 Watson Lecture season with "Perseverance on Mars."
As project scientist for the Mars 2020 mission, Farley led the science team and worked with engineers to design and build the Perseverance rover. After eight years of development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA, Perseverance launched on July 30, 2020; just over six months later, on February 18, 2021, it successfully landed on the Red Planet. At Caltech, Farley's research focuses on the geochemistry of noble gases and its applications to a range of Earth science problems, as well as the exploration of Mars and its geochemistry, geology, and geomorphology. Much of his current work uses noble gases to understand Mars' history.