Weekly Space Hangout: February 3, 2021 — Dr. Jani Radebaugh Discusses the Dragonfly Mission

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This week we are joined by Dr. Jani Radebaugh, Planetary Scientist from Brigham Young University. Jani’s field work specializes in finding analogues to other planets here on Earth. She is a Science Team Member for the newly selected NASA Dragonfly rotorcraft lander mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. She was also involved in the Cassini and Galileo Missions, the Io Volcano Observer mission proposal, and the Median project for Mars.

Professor Radebaugh travels far and wide with her Brigham Young University students to find and study unique landscapes to better understand other planets. She explores the big deserts of the world, such as the Saharan, Arabian, and Namib deserts, as well as the Argentinian Altiplano and Iran’s Lut desert to study giant sand dunes and wind-carved ridges similar to those on Titan, Mars, Venus, and Pluto. She studies lakes of lava in the Ethiopian Afar valley and Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific to compare them with active lava lakes of Jupiter’s moon Io.

Jani is a regular presence on the Science/Discovery program “How the Universe Works,” the NASA “Unexplained Files,” as well as many BBC and Nova programs. She has been an invited speaker for the U.S. State Department, the Spacefest Convention, TedX, a BYU Forum, and New York City’s Hayden Planetarium. She has spoken at many universities, astronomy organizations, and regularly visit the Traverse Mountain 6th grade.

Be sure to follow Jani on Twitter and Instagram.

Learn more about the upcoming Dragonfly Mission.

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