Space Studies colloquium has been rescheduled The colloquium talk by Professor Mike Gaffey on "Planet Mars" that was canceled due to bad weather yesterday, will now be held at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, in 111 Ryan Hall. Mars has been long identified as a target for human space missions and settlement. Since the 1986 controversial discovery of possible microbial fossils on a Martian meteorite, unmanned spacecraft from several nations have visited Mars. Although many questions remain, we know a great deal more about Mars today than we did in 1989 when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration outlined a scenario for a human mission to Mars. In his Jan. 25 colloquium presentation, Gaffey will outline what we know about Mars. He'll also talk about planning for a human mission to Mars and about human settlements on the Red Planet. Mike Gaffey is a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Space Studies. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in geology from the University of Iowa and his Ph.D. in 1974 from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in planetary science. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a researcher in the Planetary Astronomy Laboratory at MIT. Gaffey, well-known in the field of asteroid and other near-Earth objects, worked as a researcher at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy from 1977 to 1979 and at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics from 1979 to 1984. He is professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he taught from 1984 to 2001. In 2006 he received the notable honor of getting both the Leonard Medal from the Meteoritical Society and the G. K. Gilbert Award from the Planetary Science Division of the Geological Society of America, the top awards in his field. Asteroid 3545 Gaffey is named in his honor.