On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing, the Scientific Office of the Embassy of Italy in the UK and the Italian Cultural Institute in London in collaboration with AISUK present the third event in the series “Science for Society”.
The Moon has always been a source of timeless fascination. Poets, writers and artists were inspired by the Moon. Humankind visited the Moon first using imagination, and later through technology.
The space race, which made it possible to walk on the Moon 50 years ago, taught us that difficult goals can be achieved. From the Moon, we have seen, for the first time, our own planet prompting us to appreciate its fragile beauty. Now we want to go back to the Moon to build a permanent outpost. Soon lunar entrepreneurs will be ready to exploit its resources or to start a profitable space tourism business. Everything should be done with the outmost care, in order to preserve the magnificent desolation described by the astronauts.
Speakers
Patrizia Caraveo got her degree in physics in 1977 at the Milano University. Since 2002, she has the rank of Research Director and works at the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica (INAF) in Milano where she was Director from 2011 to 2017. She is also Professor of “Introduction to Astronomy” at the University of Pavia. She also represents INAF within the CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) Collaboration Board.
Owing to the Geminga success story, she won the Premio Nazionale Presidente della Repubblica in 2009. Moreover, she shared with her Swift, Fermi and Agile colleagues the Bruno Rossi prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2007, 2011 and 2012.
In 2014 she received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Women in Aerospace European Society and was included by Thomson Reuters in the list of Highly Cited Researchers for Space Science
In 2017 she was awarded the title of Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana
Professor Phil Diamond is the Director-General of the SKA (Square Kilometre Array). He was appointed to this position in October 2012 and is leading and constructing the SKA, which, when completed, will be the largest scientific project on Earth. From 2010-2012, Phil was the Chief of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS), which operated the major radio astronomy facilities in Australia. Prior to that (2006-2010) he was the director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester in the UK. The University owns and operates the giant Lovell telescope and, on behalf of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, the e-MERLIN/VLBI National Facility. Phil was responsible for the operation of both facilities. Phil Completed his PhD at the University of Manchester in 1982. He worked at the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden (1982-984) and the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany (1984-1986) before moving to the national radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the USA for 12 years (1987-1999). He held the position of Deputy Director of the NRAO’s VLA and VLBA before moving back to the UK in 1999 upon being appointed as the Director of MERLIN (1999-2006).
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