11:30 am Virtual Social Icebreaker, Noon Speaker PresentationTime:

Dr. Paul Abell, NASASpeakers:

Small Object Collision AvoidanceTitle:

This presentation will briefly cover the background of potentially hazardous objects and describe the first planetary defense spacecraft missions that are scheduled to launch this decade.  An update will be given describing  NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the European Space Agency (ESA) Hera mission that will both launch to the Didymos  binary near-Earth asteroid system.  DART will impact the smaller secondary asteroid (called Dimorphos) at 6 km/s and Hera will arrive later to rendezvous and characterize both Didymos and Dimorphos.Abstract:

Paul Abell is the Chief Scientist for Small Body Exploration in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. His main areas of interest are physical characterization of near-Earth objects (NEOs) via ground-based and spacecraft observations, examination of NEOs for future robotic an…