Monthly Meeting

Our February meeting will be on February 29. We meet at 7:00 pm for general discussion, and the presentation begins at 7:30 pm. Our speaker for this month is Ramin Lolachi, PhD, who will be discussing the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

Ramin is an assistant research scientist working for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, based at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. His two main research foci are (1) light scattering at airless bodies like the Moon and asteroids and (2) measuring water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. He has been investigating how dust lofted above the surface of the Moon scatters sunlight to understand natural phenomena such as the mysterious Lunar Horizon Glow and the means of monitoring lunar dust, a known hazard, for the next generation of Moon explorers. He is also a part of the DART investigation team. DART is the world’s first planetary defense mission and successfully reduced the orbital period of the asteroid moon, Dimorphos, about its parent asteroid, Didymos, by colliding with it. His involvement in the mission includes modeling and measuring the amount of light scattered by the impact ejecta in order to characterize the transfer of momentum from the spacecraft to the asteroid—in other words, to determine how big a “shove” we managed to give it). This allows us to understand how to use the kinetic impactor technique as a means of protecting Earth from a potential future impact.

The talk will be held at the Greenbelt Community Center. The presentations are free and open to the public.

The lecture will also be available online for those who wish to participate remotely. Use the Zoom link below to attend the meeting.

Zoom Information

• Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86278087639?pwd=SmpIRVkrOVgyOTYxMitVTmQ4eFpHQT09
• Meeting ID: 862 7808 7639
• Passcode: 837730