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AE590 Seminar: Planetary Defense: How to detect and deflect potentially hazardous asteroids

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Location
Talbot 103
Date
Aug 30, 2021   4:00 - 4:50 pm  
Speaker
Siegfried Eggl - Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering
Contact
Courtney McLearin
E-Mail
cmcleari@illinois.edu
Views
113
Originating Calendar
Aerospace Engineering Seminars

ABSTRACT:
Every year about 5,000 metric tons of asteroidal material collides with the Earth. While most of this material comes from dust and micrometeorites, our planet regularly crosses the path of larger objects. Some of those encounters have caused global catastrophes, such as the K-T extinction event that ended the age of the Dinosaurs and lead to the demise of three-quarters of all planet and animal life 66 million years ago. For the first time in history, however, the inhabitants of planet Earth have the means to guard against such catastrophic collisions. The United States and its international partners are currently pursuing a two pronged approach to this challenge. On the one hand the night sky is searched for potentially hazardous objects on a regular basis. On the other hand NASA is beginning to test technologies developed to alter the trajectories of near-Earth asteroids in earnest. In this seminar, I will discuss current and future capabilities of detecting and deflecting near-Earth asteroids with particular emphasis on the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) to be launched later this year.

BIO:
Dr. Siegfried Eggl received his PhD in Dynamical Astronomy at the University of Vienna, Austria in 2013. Following his post-doctoral research appointments at the Institute for Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (IMCCE) at the Paris Observatory, France and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Siegfried held a research faculty position in the astronomy department of the University of Washington. In 2021 Siegfried joined the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as an assistant professor. Siegfried’s research interests revolve around astrodynamics planetary science and planetary defense. He is member of the investigation team of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and he has been awarded builder status for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

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