On the 16th of November 2017 Dr Iain Martin will deliver a talk ‘Touching the Moon; Sensing an Asteroid’ at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre.

The talk will highlight the work of the University of Dundee’s Space Technology Centre in building and developing PANGU (Planet and Asteroid Natural scene Generation Utility) by presenting a range of real and imaginary planetary surfaces.

Event Description:
Landing on the surface of the moon, another planet, a comet or an asteroid is a journey of imagination, scientific discovery and above all an engineering challenge. It leads to a new level of perception, an encounter with the unknown and the excitement of exploration.

For the past two decades, the University of Dundee has been engaged in this engineering challenge, designing vision-based navigation systems able to safely guide robotic explorers to a safe landing on the surface of other planets. One of its main achievements is the development of PANGU, a software tool for testing these essential vision-based navigation systems. PANGU is able to create highly realistic planet or asteroid surfaces and simulate a spacecraft with cameras and other sensors approaching and sensing the surface on which it is to land.

Dr Iain Martin, University of Dundee, will introduce PANGU and present a series of images and videos of real and imaginary planetary surfaces.

Find out more and book your free ticket to Touching the Moon; Sensing an Asteroid.

This event sits alongside an Exhibition of Kelly Richardson’s work ‘The Weather Makers’ featuring Richardson’s piece Mariner 9 which was created using scenery-generation software in combination with technical data from NASA’s missions to Mars.