4 Oct GSW meeting (the 1592nd) is at the Cosmos Club

It is an IN-PERSON meeting only. It will feature talks on space weather, experimental petrology, and exploration of the planet Mercury, and of course, an informal presentation on the spectacular return of the asteroid samples from OSIRIS-REx. We will begin with a talk by Yarieska Collado-Vega (GSFC) on the ‘Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office: Support for NASA missions and the Artemis program’. Next up will be Megan Mouser (Carnegie) talking on ‘Exploring early planetary formation processes using high-pressure, high-temperature experimental techniques’. The final talk of the evening will be presented by Shoshana Weider (NASA Hq) on ‘Mercury Exploration: Past, Present, and Future’. Abstracts of the talks, and biographies of the speakers, are here. This meeting has proven more difficult than most to assemble because of a possible government shutdown. So details of the talks, and even who the speakers will be, was still in a state of flux until two days before the meeting. Many of you will remember our last US government shutdown in 2019, which extended for more than a month. We had several in-person GSW meetings during that time, and I vividly remember the circumstances because I was your GSW president. It was a time of improvisation, and my favorite event was showing selected cartoons from Richard (Rick) Blakely (USGS-Emeritus) as a stress reliever. One final issue: we are having some problems accessing our archives, and so Tim Mock was unable to provide the history slide during our last meeting. That slide has been a part of the background of our meetings for as long as I have been at GSW. It seems to be a problem associated with our web server, and I am working this issue, as are several others. Everything else for the meeting should be the same: Come at 7:30 PM to socialize and imbibe, the meeting begins at 8 PM, and ends by 10 PM. Michael Purucker (purucker@alumni.caltech.edu & michael.e.purucker@nasa.gov)