The King’s Association is delighted to announce the next lecture in the Enlightening Minds speaker series. We will welcome Jonathan McDowell, on Tuesday 24th November for his talk on 'Space Junk: the space environment and environmental issues in space'.

The Enlightening Minds lecture series aims to nurture and ignite intellectual curiosity across the entire King’s community - including students, parents, governors, alumni, teachers, and partner schools. These lectures feature knowledgeable members of the broader King’s community, sharing insights related to their field of research or expertise in a topical subject.

The space environment and environmental issues in space. As humanity's activity in outer space increases, it is starting to have an impact on both the Earth's environment and the environment in outer space itself, in a variety of different ways. I'll talk about the problems of space junk in orbit with the risk of collisions, the risks of being hit on the head by falling space debris, the way satellites are affecting the night sky, and how we might be affecting the atmosphere by using it as an incinerator for retired satellites.

Jonathan McDowell is an X-Ray astronomer and an expert on spaceflight history and policy. As the leader of the Chandra X-ray Center's Science Data Systems Group he was one of the lead architects of the widely praised CIAO data analysis system used by the astronomy community to analyse Chandra data. He has published over 70 refereed papers on topics including Population III stars, quasars and AGN, X-ray populations in galaxies, X-ray binaries, X-ray data analysis and minor planets.

Admission for this lecture is by free ticket reserved in advance via our box office. Tickets are available now.