About the Talk
Ms. Michelle Munk, an aerospace engineer from NASA's Langley Research Center, will present some of the highlights of her career; including most recently, instrumenting the heat shield on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The MSL heat shield instrumentation was the most extensive ever sent to Mars and returned an invaluable data set that is already influencing the missions of the future. Ms. Munk will share insights about the limitations of current systems for landing humans on Mars and discuss how NASA is approaching that challenge for the future, from her latest position of Principal Investigator for Entry, Descent and Landing within NASA's recently-formed Space Technology Mission Directorate.