Day 2 - Thursday, December 15​
(all times NYC/est. time)

Session 5: Resiliency in Future Exploration Missions
9:00 - 9:50am
Sandra Whitmire, PhD
NASA has a history of successful spaceflight missions and astronauts are known for their incredible achievements and strength. In future exploration missions, however – including long duration missions to the moon and Mars –new challenges to behavioral health and performance of the crew, await. In this session, I’ll discuss “resiliency” in the context of future missions, and highlight ways through which research in behavioral health and human factors will help to support our exploration crews.
Expert Panelist: Mitch Rudin

Session 6: Are We Alone? Studying a thus-far-lonely universe, together
10:00 - 10:50am
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, PhD
We are entering an era of astrobiological exploration of the universe, where NASA and its partners are designing missions with the explicit goal of searching for signs of life beyond Earth. We will be sending spacecraft throughout the Solar System to search for habitable environments and search those environments for signs of life. And we have a concept for a powerful new space telescope that can search for globally habitable planets beyond the Solar System, and that was designed to see how common or rare Earth-like biospheres are.
Each of these studies is inherently complex, requiring a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the environmental context of any life detection. And each mission will be unique, with unprecedented capabilities. This means that in addition to scientific and engineering excellence, success will require excellence in team building and culture. The global teams that embark on this endeavor have the potential to re-define the view of our place in the cosmos.
Expert Panelist: John Mann, MD

Session 7: Unraveling Climate Change Mysteries from Space: The Testimony of Earth-Reflected Sunlight
11:00 - 11:50am
Yolanda Shea, PhD
For decades, NASA has collaborated with partners around the nation and the world to design state-of-the-art instruments that observe Earth from space. Always eager to push the limits, NASA and its partners are also designing new instruments with unprecedented accuracy that will give us a better understanding of how and why our global climate is changing.
Some of these instruments use Earth-reflected sunlight that travels back to space, which is a powerful tool that carries with it information about the physical aspects of our home planet. Scientists all over the globe have used and will continue to use Earth-reflected sunlight to illuminate the mysteries of our home planet’s evolving climate system.
Expert Panelist: Michael Yansick

11:50am - 12:10PM
Lunch Break

Session 8: Why We Care About Bootprints on the Moon
12:10 - 1:00pm
Michelle Hanlon
It’s hard to care about bootprints sunk in soil 238,900 miles away as humanity focuses on emerging from an unforgiving virus while coping with a geopolitical unease. But how humans treat those bootprints and the historic lunar landing sites upon which they are found will speak volumes about who we humans are and who we seek to become.
This presentation will discuss the importance of recognizing human heritage in outer space both in order to preserve our history, but, perhaps more importantly, to assure a successful and sustainable future as a multi-planetary species. Kinship emerges from heritage, and it is this kinship that must be harnessed as our generation makes foundational decisions about the governance of human activities in space.
Expert Panelist: Clare Fowler, PhD

Session 9: An Immigrant's Tale: From Mumbai to NASA
1:10 - 2:00pm 
Kartik Sheth, PhD

While nearly all immigrant experiences highlight resilience, each is
different and has its own tale.  I will share my journey and some
selected vignettes that demonstrate the importance of awe and how that
allowed me to be resilient time and time again.

Expert Panelist: Tania Kura