• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

We mentioned this a few days ago, but our post somehow got lost in the whirlpools of the World Wide Web. Anyways, there's a big celebration of the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab's work this Saturday on the UA mall.

Details after the jump:

Saturday, April 10, 2010
5 p.m. - 9 p.m.

The University of Arizona chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, in coordination with the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, will be celebrating Yuri’s Night.

Yuri's Night is a celebration of two events: (1) the first successful launch of a human (Yuri Gagarin) into space on April 12, 1961 and (2) the first launch of a U.S. space shuttle on April 12, 1981. It is a celebration of all past, present and future human efforts in space exploration. Events will include telescope observing on the UA Mall, educational activities for children and meteorite and space hardware displays. The evening will feature talks by Jim Head of Raytheon, an LPL alumnus, who will discuss “America’s Future in Space,” and Kyle Stephens, UA SEDS president, who will give a talk called “Why Space?” The event is free and open to the public.

BTW: HiRISE honcho Alfred McEwen tells us about the above image:

A portion of this observation shows layered bedrock that has been faulted and tilted.

These layers were likely horizontal when the materials were first deposited, but are now tilted to high angles, approaching 90 degrees, so we get a good cross-sectional view from a bird's-eye view.

The layers have distinctive colors, textures, and thicknesses, so it is easy to correlate layers from place to place. That makes it easy to measure the offset along the many faults breaking the layers.