NASA鈥檚 Lucy Mission Updates & Occultations
October 17 at 7pm &听October 18听at 7pm
launched in October of 2021 and will be the first to . By the end of its twelve-year mission, the spacecraft will have flown by a record-breaking number of asteroids for a single mission (eleven and counting!).
Why does the mission鈥檚 asteroid count keep increasing? And how does the Lucy Team pinpoint the asteroid positions in the first place?
Join a member of the Lucy Occultation Team for a deep dive into the science and adventure of observing asteroids by observing the shadows of these celestial bodies as they pass in front of distant stars (kind of like a mini solar eclipse). Stick around for mission updates including the latest results from last year鈥檚 encounter with the asteroid and what to expect from Lucy鈥檚 travels in the upcoming months.
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Brian Keeney, Principal Analyst 鈥 Southwest Research Institute
Dr. Brian Keeney received his PhD from 精品SM在线影片 and is now a Principal Analyst at the听, where he has planned dozens of stellar occultation campaigns for NASA's听听and听missions. Dr. Keeney has also used data from听New Horizons听to measure the far-UV surface reflectance of Pluto鈥檚 moon Charon, measured the amount of O2听in the coma of Comet 67P/Churyumov鈥揋erasimenko using far-UV spectra from听, and studied the circumgalactic medium听using the听's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
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Ivy Knudsen, Assistant Researcher in Planetary Science 鈥 Southwest Research Institute
Ivy Knudsen - I am a graduate of the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences program at 精品SM在线影片, class of 2023. I have since been hired to work at the Southwest Research Institute to work on a project for the New Horizons mission, analyzing small impact craters on small bodies. I recently presented the progress of this project in Taiwan at the TNO2024 conference. I also help with telescopic instrumentation for LUCY mission occultations, as well as further crater analysis on the Moon, and Mars. I will be helping with these contributions to understanding solar system formation until I begin graduate school for planetary science and/or astrophysics. l adore this work, having very strong enthusiasm for a wide variety of 铿乪lds including planetary dynamics, Solar System formation and exploration, geophysics, galactic formation, and many others!
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