Patagonia & the Wild Atlantic: Cruise to the Falkland Islands

A marine scientist by training and educator by profession, NASA Astronaut (ret.) Richard Arnold has spent over two hundred days in orbit including over thirty-two hours outside the space station engaged in the ultimate human adventure - spacewalking. He has flown on both the iconic Space Shuttle and Soyuz spacecraft with other professional astronauts from around the world. Come share in the adventure and gain insight into his unique perspective on our home planet from vantage points ranging from below the surface of the Earth and sea to beyond the limits of our atmosphere.

Uma Gorti is an astrophysicist who has spent more than two decades studying how stars and planets form, and chairs the Astronomy and Astrophysics group at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center. She also works in the Astrophysics Division at NASA's Ames Research Center, building computational models of the physics and chemistry at work in the gas and dust disks that surround young stars. Her research draws on observations from Hubble, ALMA, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which she uses to test those models against what telescopes actually see.

A pioneering underwater archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer, Dr. Dolores Elkin founded Argentina’s first Underwater Archaeology Programme and is a Principal Researcher at CONICET. She has led expeditions to historic shipwrecks along Patagonia’s remote southern coast, among them HMS Swift, the British warship lost in 1770, and the Spanish vessel Purísima Concepción, wrecked off Tierra del Fuego in 1765. An advisor to UNESCO on underwater cultural heritage, she joins SH Vega’s Patagonian voyage alongside Dr. Underwood to share the stories of shipwrecks, seafarers and cultural encounters woven into the region’s maritime past.

An internationally respected maritime archaeologist and President of ICOMOS’ International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage, Dr. Chris Underwood has dedicated more than four decades to exploring and preserving the world's submerged history. His distinguished career includes participation in the recovery of Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose, and archaeological investigations in Patagonia, including the historic wreck of HMS Swift, in collaboration with Argentine archaeologist Dr. Dolores Elkin. Joining SH Vega alongside Dr. Elkin, he will bring to life the fascinating maritime history of Cape Horn, the Falkland Islands and Patagonia.