Thanks to a group of ambitious students, Convocation Hall will play host this Friday to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield for a special guest lecture. Titled “Expanding Canada’s Frontiers: To Mars and Beyond,” the lecture will also feature Darlene Lim, an expert on Mars exploration and a Ph.D. student in geology at U of T.
The U of T Astronomy and Space Exploration Society (UTASX), founded earlier this year by third year student Justin Trottier, organized the event. The society’s mission is to spread awareness of the relevance of the cosmos to life on earth.
Astronomy “is like environmental science, only in a much larger scale,” says Carmen Marra, Vice-Present of the Society, who is completing his first year in U of T’s Planetary Science program.
We have learned in the last century that Earth is not a closed system. The galaxy affects the solar system the way the solar system affects Earth, Marra says. Changes on Earth affect life on the planet, and the study of space is as fundamental as geology to understanding our planet, say the club founders.
“With the pollution we have, and the urban sprawl, people are cut off from the stars,” Marra continues. “We don’t have the dark skies like our ancestors did. I think that’s had an effect on people. It may be a very subtle effect, but I think it’s there. You can sense in people that there’s the need to know about the wider world.”
Two weeks ago, a NASA spacecraft flew by a comet named Stardust. The spacecraft took pictures as it flew within 200 km. It also collected samples of the comet. “One of the best reasons to study comets is that’s where we think all the water in our oceans came from,” says Marra.
The society organized its first event in November, watching the lunar eclipse through the telescope at the U of T-affiliated David Dunlap Observatory (DDO) in Richmond Hill. The DDO is a research center of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and its telescope is the largest in Canada.
The staff at DDO made the event a success. As Trottier comments, “They were amateur astronomers who had day jobs, but here they were, helping us and showing us how to use the equipment, explaining what we were actually seeing in the sky. It was marvelous.”
The guest lecture this Friday will be the society’s most ambitious event to date. Other projects in the works include star gazing events, seminars on using astronomy equipment such as telescopes, debates on topics such as UFOs and extraterrestrial life, tours and open houses of facilities such as the DDO and the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTAES).
“This is the best time in human history to study space,” says Marra. His program of study, Planetary Science, is relatively new at U of T. It’s an interdisciplinary program offered by the Departments of Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology and Physics.
Marra talks about the experience related by the first Canadian in space, Mark Garneau, who has spoken about seeing the damage we are doing to Earth. “It’s noticeably visible in space,” says Marra. “Looking down, you can see the Amazon, for example. Where the Amazon meets The Atlantic, there’s this brown muddy flow spreading out into the ocean. That’s because we’ve deforested the basin.”
As president of the CSA, Garneau has personally directed the agency to spend at least half its money on Earth studies. According to Marra, only 10 per cent used to be spent on Earth studies.
“We’re not just the stewards of animals and plants. If we want to survive long term on this planet, the whole world is our concern,” Marra says as he discusses the importance and applicability of space studies. “The atmosphere, the oceans, and the land-even what’s below the land-these are our concerns. We have to start understanding the system now, if we want to protect it long term.”
