Jack Farmer, director and principal investigator of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Arizona State University, is BGSU's first McMaster Visiting Scientist. He will discuss recent discoveries in the exploration of Mars during a campus visit Thursday and Friday (Sept. 23 and 24).

Astrobiologist to discuss exploration of Mars

A member of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Team will review recent discoveries by robotic "field geologists" on the Red Planet when he speaks at BGSU Thursday (Sept. 23).

Jack Farmer, director and principal investigator of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Arizona State University, will discuss exploration of Mars at 7 p.m. in 115 Olscamp Hall. His free, public address is part of a two-day visit to campus, during which he will meet and speak with a number of students and faculty.

The "field geologists" on Mars are Spirit and Opportunity, robotic rovers that NASA landed earlier this year at two sites—Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum. Both sites are believed to be locations of ancient Martian lakes. The rovers have confirmed that early in its history, Mars was a more habitable place, with enough water to potentially support microbial life.

Farmer will outline the implications of Spirit and Opportunity's discoveries for future missions that will look for a fossil record of Martian life.

The guest speaker is the University's first McMaster Visiting Scientist, in a program underwritten by a $250,000 endowment funded by Helen and the late Harold McMaster. The longtime BGSU benefactors, from Perrysburg, funded the interdisciplinary program to bring eminent scholars or practitioners from the fields of chemistry, biology, geology, physics or astronomy to the University.

Farmer is also a professor of geological sciences at Arizona State, where he assumed leadership of the astrobiology program after his arrival in 1998. Astrobiology seeks to understand the origin of the building blocks of life; how they combine to create life; how life affects, and is affected by, the environment from which it arose, and, finally, how life expands beyond its planet of origin.

Farmer, who earned a Ph.D. in paleontology from the University of California-Davis in 1978, is a member of the Astrobiology Institute's executive board and leads its Mars Focus Group. He serves on various NASA committees as well, including the Space Science Advisory Committee and several related to Martian exploration.

His interests include early evolution of the biosphere—the part of the earth's crust, waters and atmosphere that supports life—as well as strategies for exploring Mars and other extraterrestrial bodies for a past or present biosphere. He is also interested in the microbiology and biosedimentology of thermal springs and other extreme environments.

Before joining the Arizona State faculty, Farmer worked at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, first as a National Research Council Senior Fellow and later as a research scientist in the center's exobiology branch. Exobiology is the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe.

He has also been a senior museum scientist and lecturer at UC-Davis, a faculty member at UCLA, and a senior petroleum geologist for Exxon in Los Angeles.

Farmer's public lecture is part of a two-day stay hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences. During his time on campus Thursday and Friday, he will meet with science faculty and students, including undergraduate student researchers; attend classes, and give a technical talk for graduate students and science faculty.

For more information about Farmer, visit his Web site at http://geology.asu.edu/jfarmer/.