NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is scheduled to join two space industry heavyweights on a Caltech stage Wednesday night, for a panel discussion that filled up so fast the campus is now planning a standby line for latecomers. The event, titled First Light: The Brave New Space Age, runs from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Beckman Auditorium in Pasadena, and it anchors a two-day celebration tied to the inauguration of Caltech's tenth president.
A Packed Panel on the Moon, Mars and Commercial Space
Advance registration for the free forum has reached capacity, according to Caltech, though a standby line will be available for anyone still hoping to get in. Visitors without tickets are advised to arrive no later than 6:50 p.m., with seating subject to availability. Isaacman will be joined by Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory and principal investigator of NASA's Psyche mission, as reported by UC Berkeley's Earth and Planetary Science department, alongside Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who now serves as chief executive and executive chairman of rocket manufacturer Relativity Space. Journalist Jo Ling Kent will moderate, and the discussion is set to examine commercial space activity and the future exploration of the Moon and Mars, according to Pasadena Now.
Before the panel begins, Caltech and JPL researchers will present interactive demonstrations starting at 5:30 p.m. outside Beckman Auditorium, with music and refreshments accompanying the activities. Guests can examine meteorites, learn about battery chemistry, check out brain-machine interfaces and engage with an interactive light demonstration, the same report notes. Caltech is offering free parking in the north and south Wilson parking structures, with accessible parking available in Lot 11, and anyone with ticketing questions can reach the campus ticket office at (626) 395-4652.
A 90-Year Look Back at JPL, Just Steps Away
Running in parallel with the forum is a free public exhibition called Dare Mighty Things: From Rocketry to Space Exploration at Caltech JPL, which previews Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Beckman Room at the Beckman Institute. The exhibit was conceived and created by Caltech Archives and Special Collections and the JPL Archives, according to Caltech's library news blog, and it features photos, documents, drawings, video and artifacts chronicling ninety years of innovation, exploration and discovery at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA. No advance registration is required to attend, and the library notes the preview is part of the campus's Science and Discovery Night tied to the inauguration. Additional public previews of the exhibit are set for Friday afternoon and again on November 4.
Inauguration Ceremony Follows Thursday Morning
The space forum and exhibition preview serve as a prelude to the formal inauguration of Ray Jayawardhana, Caltech's tenth president, who took office on July 1. Jayawardhana previously served as Johns Hopkins University's provost, per the same Pasadena Now report. His inauguration ceremony begins at 10 a.m. Thursday on Beckman Mall, with the event livestreamed starting at 9:45 a.m. PDT, followed by a community luncheon and a campus celebration at noon.
Artemis Timeline Looms Over the Conversation
The panel's focus on lunar exploration comes as NASA continues working toward its Artemis program, which the agency is targeting for the first Artemis crewed lunar landing in 2028 under Artemis IV, according to Pasadena Now's reporting. NASA has also announced that Artemis III will send four astronauts into low Earth orbit in 2027 to test spacecraft rendezvous and docking with experimental lunar landing systems developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX. NASA official Jeremy Parsons said, per a NASA announcement cited in the report, “Every piece of this mission in Earth orbit is designed to reduce risk before we put astronauts back on the Moon.”
