Public school students will get an insider’s insights into how to forge a career with NASA when Australian planetary scientist Dr Adrian Brown zooms in from his Mars mission for a visit this month.

A former Australian Navy officer and weapons engineer, Dr Brown is now deputy program scientist for the Mars 2020 mission, which has a spaceship containing the robotic explorer Perseverance currently hurtling towards the red planet at 50,000 kilometres per hour.

When it arrives on 18 February 2021, the spacecraft must survive 'seven minutes of terror' as it enters Mars' thin atmosphere before Perseverance is lowered by a sky crane to the cold, apparently desolate, surface.

It will then begin to search for answers to the greatest question of all … are we alone?

Students will be able to ask Dr Brown how he made the journey from Melbourne to overseeing a Mars mission during a zoominar on Monday, August 24 starting at 10am.

During the 50-minute zoominar, Dr Brown will also talk about the Mars mission, what it’s like to work at NASA headquarters (National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States) and the connection between rocks in Australia’s Pilbara and rocks on the surface of Mars.

The event is hosted by Dart Connections as part of a collaboration between the Powerhouse Museum and Education NSW.