Biography
| Dr. Daniel Britt is the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has served on the science teams of four NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1, New Horizons, and the Lucy Mission for a series of flybys of asteroids near Jupiter. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for many of NASA’s Mars landers. He currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars under several NASA grants and is the director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS), a node of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). A key focus area is extraterrestrial resources, and he is a Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Competent Person for Lunar and Asteroid Resources. He has served as the Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. Honors include 6 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, the NASA-SSERVI Shoemaker Award, election as a UCF Pegasus Professor, and an asteroid named after him; 4395 DanBritt. |
Video Links for Dr. Britt’s Talks
Orbits and Ice Ages: The History of Climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgNxF2HlN3w
Economics and Exploration: A Bit of Historical Perspective on the New Age of Exploration
Toward a Space Based Economy
Why use space resources? What resources are available?
The Economic Geology of Luna and Asteroid Resources – Mineral Evolution, review of the primordial suite of minerals
Research Areas
| The physical properties of Lunar and Asteroid regoliths and surfaces The economic geology and assessment of Lunar and Asteroid resources Development of simulants for Lunar, Asteroid, and Martian regoliths Processing of Lunar and Asteroid resources Effects of space weathering on volatile-rich asteroids.
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Research Opportunities for Students
Information on requirements
Currently accepting:
Graduate: No
Undergraduate: No
