Venue: Mott Lecture Theatre, HH Wills Physics Labs Building, Tyndall Ave, 4pm

We would like to invite you to attend the Physics Colloquium, which will be held on Monday from 4:00PM - 5:00PM in the Mott Lecture Theatre. The colloquia will be followed by tea and coffee in the staff coffee room. We hope to see you there!

The most imminent event in the series, on the 23rd April, will be hosted by Derek C. Richardson (Professor of Astronomy, University of Maryland at College Park). Click here for a PDF of the abstract:Colloquium Poster - Derek C Richardson (PDF, 487kB)

For the full list of upcoming colloquia, visit this article.

Abstract:

On September 26, 2022, the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully impacted Dimorphos, a 150 m diameter asteroid in orbit around its larger companion, Didymos, reducing the orbit period by 33 minutes (about 5%). This was the first demonstration of the use of a kinetic impactor to alter the orbit of a celestial body as a test of mitigation strategies for protecting Earth from impact. Results indicate that ejecta from the impact were an important contributor to the overall deflection. The follow-up ESA Hera spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with the Didymos system in early 2027 to further assess the DART result and fully characterize the asteroids. I will give an overview of the motivation for DART, provide highlights from the mission, and discuss some of the interesting dynamics that arose in preparation for the mission and in the aftermath of the impact.