Join us for the first session of the year and the return of our brilliant 2024 talk series presented by the Foundation for the Western Australian Museum (FWAM) to learn about Australia on the moon.
In 2022 the Western Australian Museum became the custodian of a significant science-history collection from the late Dr Brian O’Brien, an Australian physicist who contributed to NASA’s famous Apollo missions and became an unlikely expert in the study of lunar dust.
Join Joshua Kalmund, Assistant Curator in the History Department at the WA Museum, as he charts O’Brien’s long career in space science from witnessing auroras in Antarctica, to launching satellites in Iowa and sending experiments to the surface of the moon and learn how O’Brien’s research in the 1960s and 70s has helped inform contemporary lunar missions.
Doors open at 5pm
Talk starts at 6pm
Event concludes at 7pm
Free to LF members
General Admission: $15
Join us in Luis’ for a drink beforehand and stay for dinner afterwards - book a table with the
Concierge.
After graduating from the University of Sydney with a PhD in Physics, O’Brien’s career began as Deputy Chief Physicist with the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition from 1958 to 1959. While in Antarctic, O’Brien became fascinated by auroras and developed the idea to use satellites to study their causes and effects.
In 1959 he moved to the USA, working as a physics professor at Iowa University from 1959 to 1963 and then Rice University from 1963 to 1968. In addition to lecturing in physics, O’Brien also designed, built and launched numerous satellites during this period to study auroras and the radiation belts surrounding the Earth.
In 1965 O’Brien’s Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment (CPLEE) was one of seven experiments initially chosen by NASA to be deployed during the Apollo missions. Upon being told that CPLEE must have a removable dust cover, Brian insisted on the inclusion of a devise to measure dust levels on the lunar surface. On January 12 1966, Brian designed the Dust Detector Experiment (DDE) while on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston. The DDE was small, light, and did not require any additional time from the astronauts to deploy. DDEs were successfully deployed on Apollo 11, 12, 14, and 15.
Brian returned to live in Australia in 1968, commuting to Rice University for his work on Apollo 12, 13 and 14. In 1971 he was appointed the first head of WA's Environmental Protection Agency. In 1978 Brian and his wife Avril began an environmental and strategic consultancy business.
In 2006 Brian returned to space science, focusing on studying lunar dust. After learning that NASA had lost their copies of the data from his Apollo experiments, O’Brien set about digitising his copies of these data tapes and began a deep dive into studying the movement and behaviour of lunar dust based on this data collected in the 1960s and 70s, publishing numerous papers and even providing advice to the Chinese lunar mission before his death in 2020.
After O’Brien’s death, his family and close colleague Guy Holmes facilitated the donation of his vast collection of documents and items related to his career in space science to the WA Museum and the State Library of WA (with physical items going to the WA Museum and documentary, archival and photographic material going to SLWA). The Brian O’Brien Collection held by the WA Museum includes models of some of his experiments and satellites, data tapes from the Apollo missions, a training manual used to teach the Apollo astronauts, and badges and other ephemera from the Apollo missions and the numerous space science conferences he attended after his return to the field in the 2000s. Some of the most significant items from this collection were featured in last year’s To the Moon temporary exhibition at Boola Bardip.