January 23rd: Public Talk by Dr Marina Brozović: Pinging space rocks – radar story of asteroids and comets

This free to attend talk will discuss some of the most important radar contributions to the field of planetary science.

Short of sending a spacecraft, radar observations have proven to be the most effective technique when studying asteroids and comets. The two most powerful radars in the world are the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Goldstone Solar System Radar in the Mojave Desert in California. To date, these radars have observed more than 1000 asteroids and 21 comets. Radars play an important role in the physical characterization of small bodies because radar images directly display an object’s size, shape, and surface features. Furthermore, radar measurements of line-of-sight velocities and distances provide powerful orbital constraints and frequently add decades and even centuries to how far in the future we can reliably calculate orbits. This is particularly important when assessing the impact probabilities of potentially hazardous asteroids. This talk will discuss some of the most important radar contributions to the field of planetary science, space missions, and will also show some of the best radar images of asteroids and comets obtained to date.

Marina Brozović got her B.S. in physics at the University of Zagreb in Croatia and a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. She has been working as a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California since 2007. Dr. Brozović observed more than 200 near-Earth asteroids with radar, and she was involved in the discoveries of a dozen binary and three triple asteroid systems, fourteen moons of Jupiter, and several Trans-Neptunian Objects. Dr. Brozović worked on the NASA’s New Horizons mission to the dwarf planet Pluto as a part of the Hazards Team, and she is currently on the Investigation Team for an infra-red space telescope called NEO Surveyor that will search for asteroids and comets that can endanger Earth. A main-belt asteroid 7295 Brozovic is named after her.

For more information and to register click here