The Planetary Sciences team from the University of Alicante travels to Florida to participate in the launch of the Hera space mission.

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The Planetary Sciences team from the University of Alicante (UA) took part in the launch of the Hera mission by the European Space Agency (ESA), scheduled for October 7, 2024, from Cape Canaveral. UA researchers Adriano Campo Bagatin, Paula Benavidez, Laura M. Parro, and Po-Yen Liu attended the launch of the first probe to explore the binary asteroid system Didymos.

Hera is part of the planetary defense strategy and follows NASA’s DART mission, which impacted the asteroid Dimorphos to alter its orbit. The UA team studies the internal structure of asteroids and the evolution of the material ejected by the DART collision. They expect to receive the first images of the asteroid in 2026, which will help improve preparedness to deflect asteroids that could threaten Earth, such as Apophis in 2029.

Read more at: https://www.informacion.es/alicante/2024/10/03/universidad-alicante-mision-espacial-participa-florida-ciencias-planetarias-108867591.html

How NASA managed to divert the trajectory of an asteroid: experts analyze the first planetary defense mission

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On the Spanish television channel Cuatro, on the news program Código 10 at 11:00 p.m. this Tuesday, April 3, 2024, Adriano Campo Bagatín was interviewed to talk about the DART mission, the milestone in planetary defense carried out two years ago.

The controversy surrounding the Diablo Comet reopens the debate on whether or not we are prepared to defend ourselves against objects on a trajectory towards Earth.

The full interview is available at the following link:

https://www.cuatro.com/codigo-10/20240402/nasa-trayectoria-asteroide-expertos-planetaria_18_012119776.html

One year after the NASA/DART impact What do we know so far and what remains to be known?

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Gonzalo Tancredi, professor at the University of the Republic (Montevideo, Uruguay), and is going to give a talk/seminar this Friday, January 26, 2024 about the scientific project carried out a year ago with the NASA/DART mission.

On September 26, 2022, NASA’s DART space probe impacted the Dimorphos satellite of the asteroid (65803) Didymos. The objective was to test the technique for deflecting asteroids on a collision course with Earth called the kinetic impactor. Minutes later the LICIACube probe of the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana took spectacular images of the event.

The Copernican revolution: 480 years of history, science and society

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Coinciding with the 480th anniversary of the publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the celestial orbs) by Nicolás Copernicus, the University of Alicante (UA) presents the lecture series The Copernican revolution: 480 years of history, science and society . With this work, the polish astronomer began a time of questioning medieval thought installed in European culture with his heliocentric theory, where the revolves in orbit around the Sun.

The first part of the cycle organized by the UA will focus on the history and science around the Copernican revolution, from the pre-Copernicans to Galileo Galilei, by David Barrado this Friday, November 10, 2023. For its part, on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, the session will feature the newly appointed director of the Office of Space and Society of the Spanish Space Agency, Eva Villaver, who will delve into the recent revolution of the discovery of extrasolar planets, imagined five centuries earlier by Giordano Bruno. The Alicante writer Miguel Ángel Pérez Oca will introduce the figure of this Neapolitan thinker who was a victim of the denial of free thought marked by the Inquisition.

In the second part of the cycle, the relationship between credulity and science, fake news and the scientific method will be analyzed. Thus, on Thursday, January 25, 2024, Xavier Luri, from the University of Barcelona, will talk about the scientific method in everyday life. Finally, on Friday, February 2, Fernando Cuartero, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, will analyze the relationship between the need for an objective vision of natural and social reality, secularism in terms of institutional neutrality with respect to individual free beliefs and the embodiment of those principles in a fully realized democracy

Conference “Geodynamic analysis of Mars, Europe and Ceres crust”

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Next Thursday 18 February at 11:00 the conference: “Geodynamic analysis of Mars, Europe and Ceres crust” will be imparted by the Doctor of Geology (UCM) Laura M. Parro. The investigator Laura M. Parro is actually a postdoctoral hired in the NEO-MAPP project.

The conference resumes her cientific investigation realized until now in the field of planetary geology focused in the study of the termic flow, the structure of the crust and the tectonic evolution of rocky planets and/or objects and frozen satelites of the Solar System. The analysis of the thermic estate, composition and structure of the external capes of those bodies, as well as the deformations registered in their surfaces, they allow us to know better the global dynamic and which has been it’s evolution throughout his geological history. Concrete examples of studies realized on Mars, Europe and Ceres will be presented, and the present special missions and future ones implied in obtaining data from those planetary bodies.

The conference will be able to be followed through Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/erz-dsqc-vdg

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“We open up our web page on the 14th of September 2020, celebrating the 28th aniversary of the IAU circular (No. 5611) informing about the discovery of the first trans-Neptunian object (TNO), 1992 QB1. <<That was like wake up one morning and discover that your backyard is twice as large than you believed.>>, in David Jewett’s words. He discovered this object together with Jane Luu on the 30th of August of 1992 at the 2.2 m telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory (Hawaii). Later discoveries of TNOs confirmed that the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt is real and a new era of knowledge of the Solar System was inaugurated.”

Asteroid Exploration: Unveiling the History of the Solar System

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020. 7:00 PM

Villajoyosa University Venue

Adriano Campo Bagatin:
“Asteroid Exploration: Reading the History of the Solar System”

Summary:
220 years after the discovery of the first asteroid, our view of the solar system has profoundly changed. In particular, observations and especially space exploration over the past 30 years have made it possible to study these small bodies in detail, revolutionizing our understanding of how our solar system has evolved.

Link to the Meet session: meet.google.com/txb-rcib-pwm

Event Information:
This event is planned to be in person. For details about seating capacity, please contact the venue:

Villajoyosa University Venue
C/ Colón, 57
03570 Villajoyosa (Alicante)

Tel: (+34) 96 650 8355

Gravitational re-accumulation as the origin of most contact binaries and other small body shapes (Icarus, 2020)

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Adriano Campo Bagatin, Rafael A. Alemañ, Paula G. Benavidez, Manuel Pérez-Molina, Dereck C. Richardson

Asteroids, the small rocky bodies in our solar system, exhibit a remarkable diversity of shapes. This variety ranges from nearly spherical objects to elongated ones, binary systems (a primary body orbited by a smaller one), and “contact binaries” such as (25143) Itokawa, the target of the Hayabusa mission (JAXA). Contact binaries, in particular, have a distinctive shape characterized by significant mass at their opposite ends, separated by a neck or constriction, resembling a giant peanut. These objects are thought to form through the slow collision of two previously independent bodies that eventually merge into a single entity.

Regardless of their shape, these small bodies spend most of their time within the Asteroid Belt, a region characterized by frequent collisions. Speculations about the origin of the diverse asteroid shapes often involve mechanisms such as collisions (which may group previously separate objects) and the effects of asteroid spin (which could cause parts of the body to break off).

Recent numerical simulations of the gravitational interaction between the components of multi-object systems (n-body systems) have been conducted to analyze the evolution of fragments resulting from catastrophic collisions (Campo Bagatin et al., 2018). This study introduces the idea that the stochastic process of gravitational reaccumulation of these fragments could be responsible for many of the observed asteroid shapes. Shape elongation—both for S-type (silicate-rich) and C-type (carbonaceous) asteroids—shows a tendency to increase with the growth of the initial volume of fragments set to reaccumulate.

Moreover, the conclusions presented in this article suggest that contact binaries could form regularly during the gravitational reaccumulation process following catastrophic impacts. Similar processes may have occurred in some comets and trans-Neptunian objects (those located beyond Neptune’s orbit).

Link to the article