Science Cafe Orlando

Meteorites are pieces of the cosmos that literally fall out of the sky into our lives. They are scientifically invaluable as samples of asteroids, our Moon, and the planet Mars. How they are recovered is the subject of some very human stories of luck, random chance, and lively entrepreneurial spirit. Dr Britt will relate some of the more interesting (or larcenous) meteorite recoveries and teach the audience to keep their eyes open for random rocks from the sky.

Dr. Daniel Britt is a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for all the NASA Mars landers. He currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named after him; 4395 DanBritt. He was recently elected President of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He lives in Orlando with his wife Judith. They have two sons, ages 15 and 20.