Join Keck Observatory for a free, ʻohana-friendly public astronomy talk with kamaʻaina Megan Ansdell, NASA Program Officer, on Thursday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m. at the Gates Performing Arts Center at Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy in Waimea. Doors open at 6:00 p.m.

In this talk, we will embark on the search for life beyond Earth in a journey through NASA’s groundbreaking space science missions. We will start in our own Solar System, with the Mars orbiters, landers, rovers that have for decades been exploring the red planet for signs of water and ancient microbial life, leading us to the anticipated Mars Sample Return—NASA’s ambitious, multi-mission campaign that would bring carefully selected samples of Martian material to Earth for the first time. We will then explore beyond our solar system, with the space observatories that have revolutionized our understanding of planets around stars other than our Sun—known as exoplanets—from some of the first exoplanet detections with the Hubble Space Telescope, to the foundational exoplanet demographics provided by the Kepler mission, to the most detailed characterizations of exoplanet atmospheres by the James Webb Space Telescope. Looking to the future, we will highlight how NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory aims be the first space telescope capable of searching for “biosignatures” on Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, shedding light on how common life is in our region of the galaxy, in major step toward answering the question: “Are we alone?”