Sr. Mary Ellen Murphy talks space exploration, NASA, and God

Mary E. Murphy, RSM, Ph. D., is Scholar in Residence at the University of St. Joseph.  Sr. Mary Ellen’s work as a scientist is fascinating and she will talk with us about how space exploration and the continuing work of science ties the universe and God’s story of Creation together.  She was recently a visiting senior scientist in the Astrochemistry Branch, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. where she was a member of the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous [NEAR] science team  preparing a Meteorite Data Base for the  NEAR–Shoemaker spacecraft that met the asteroid Eros on February 14, 2000 and a year later made a historic soft landing on the surface of Eros.  Her interest in meteorites goes back to her earlier doctoral research on the Orgueil meteorite which fell in France in the nineteenth century. As an organic geochemist she was a co-investigator on Apollo 11 lunar rocks and a consultant to NASA on the Viking mission to Mars. Her doctoral research was sponsored by NASA at the University of California-San Diego under Bartholemew Nagy and Harold Urey, a Nobel Prize winner. 

 Please join us at 6:30 on Sunday, January 19, for refreshments and at 7 for a presentation by Sr. Mary Ellen, with some conversation to follow.  Please let your congregations know about this opportunity, as well.

George