Lecturer: Dan Scheeres, University of Colorado
Dan Scheeres is a University of Colorado Distinguished Professor and is the A. Richard Seebass Endowed Chair Professor in the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Scheeres was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, and is a Fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Astronautical Society. He was awarded the Dirk Brouwer Award from the American Astronautical Society in 2013. Scheeres has studied the dynamics of the asteroid environment from a scientific, engineering and navigation perspective since 1992 and has been involved with NASA’s NEAR mission to asteroid Eros, the Japanese Hayabusa missions to asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, and is currently a Co-Investigator on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu and leads the Radio Science team of that mission. In 2012 he published a Springer-Praxis book on orbital mechanics about small bodies entitled “Orbital Motion in Strongly Perturbed Environments: Applications to Asteroid, Comet and Planetary Satellite Orbiters.” Asteroid 8887 is named “Scheeres” in recognition of his contributions to the scientific understanding of the dynamical environment about asteroids.
Topic: Microgravity and small bodies
Recommended Readings:
Scaling forces to asteroid surfaces: The role of cohesion (click here to download)
Disaggregation of small, cohesive rubble pile asteroids due to YORP (click here to download)
The strength of regolith and rubble pile asteroids (click here to download)
Recorded talk: click to view