The meeting will took place on September 11, 2025  at 7 PM on Zoom and at the Robinson Nature Center.

Featured Speaker: Mehdi Benna, Planetary Scientist with NASA at GSFC will be talking about the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS), one of the first three payloads to be a part of Artemis III that will send astronauts to explore the region near the lunar South Pole. Artemis III, currently planned to launch in 2026, will be the first time humans will return to the Moon’s surface since the historic Apollo program in 1969-1972. The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is a compact, autonomous seismometer suite designed to carry out continuous, long-term monitoring of the seismic environment, namely ground motion from moonquakes to meteorite impacts in the lunar south polar region. The instrument will characterize the regional structure of the Moon’s crust and mantle, which will add valuable information to lunar formation and evolution models.

SeeStar Very Small Array Update: Matthew Peters will join us to give a status update on the targets for this month and how to get involved with using your SeeStar (or other EAA scope) to help create some amazing collaborative results.

Star Party Report: Rich & Millie Russin will share their recent experience attending this year’s Grand Canyon Star Party.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Benna is a planetary scientist with a research emphasis in plasma physics and planetary magnetospheres dynamics.

Dr. Benna’s main research interest is the numerical modeling of planetary magnetospheres and exospheres. Besides his scientific work, he uses his engineering experience to lead and support the development of several space-borne instruments (ROSETTA-CONSERT, CONTOUR-NGIMS, MSL-SAM, LADEE-NMS, MAVEN-NGIMS, CLPS-SEAL, GDC-MoSAIC, and Artemis III/LEMS). Dr. Benna has authored or coauthored more than 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and more than 200 communications or invited presentations in international conferences related to the field of planetary science. His publications include articles on MHD modeling of planetary magnetospheres, comets and icy moons of the solar system, radiotomography techniques, and ill-posed inverse problems.

 Dr. Benna received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) in 1999. After obtaining a M.Sc. in Radio-wave Telecommunication from the University of Tunis in 2000, he received in 2002 a Ph.D. in Space Science from the University of Toulouse in France. From 2002 to 2003, Dr. Benna was an associate scientist at the Planetary and Terrestrial Geophysics Laboratory (CNRS) in France, and from 2003 to 2006, he was an NRC postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.