about the event

The Asteroid Foundation and our premier sponsors welcome academic and industry leaders to a technical presentation about asteroids led by experts traveling from the US and Europe. Learn insights into asteroids including space missions, computational tools to find, track and deflect asteroids, the state of the world with respect to United Nations asteroid initiatives and much more. You alongside our visiting astronauts and cosmonauts will have the chance to ask your questions and discover more about this fascinating and evolving topic.

This program is part of the United Nations International Asteroid Day campaign and is made possible thanks to our sponsors the Luxembourg Space Agency, SES, BCE, the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, OHB Systems and is co-funded by the European Union.

Anyone who is in attendance of the Technical Briefing will get automatic admission to the Space Cafe. If you register for the Technical Briefing, but do not attend, you will be unable to join the Space Cafe event later though this registration list. Read more about the space cafe here.

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Technical Briefing speakers include:

- Mario Juric, Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington

Mario Juric is an Associate Professor of Astronomy at the Astronomy Department of the University of Washington, where he holds the Washington Research Foundation Data Science Term Chair. He’s also a Senior Fellow at the University’s eScience Institute, dedicated to advancing research in Big Data.

Mario’s research is in the area of data-intensive survey astronomy, ranging from studies of the structure and formation of the Milky Way, exoplanetary dynamics, to the exploration of asteroids in the Solar System. He has developed a range of astronomical software products and platforms, including pipelines for the SDSS Moving Object Catalog (SDSS MOC) asteroid association. Most recently, he’s been leading the research of algorithms needed to discover and identify asteroids with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

- Patrick Michel, Senior Researcher at CNRS, NEO-MAPP Project Coordinator

​​Dr. Patrick Michel is a planetary scientist, senior researcher at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), and leader of the team TOP (Theories and Observations in Planetology) of the Lagrange Laboratory at the Côte d’Azur Observatory. He is a specialist of the physical properties and the collisional and dynamical evolution of asteroids as well as the author or co-author of more than 90 publications in international peer-review journals, including the cover of both Nature and Science. He serves as Co-I of the two asteroid sample return missions, NASA’s New Frontiers OSIRIS-REx and JAXA’s Hayabusa2, and as PI of the Hera Mission project during its study at ESA.

- Sabina Raducan, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Bern, NEO-MAPP Scientist

Sabina D. Raducan is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her job is mainly centered around creating numerical simulations of impacts into asteroids. Sabina has been part of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Program (DART) investigation team that examines the use of an impactor spacecraft for planetary defense against potential threats posed by Earth-crossing asteroids. Supervised by Gareth Collins, she applied the iSALE shock physics code to model the effect of asteroid properties (cohesion, porosity, internal fraction) on ejecta momentum distribution and to calculate the resulting deflection induced by the impactor. Sabina’s significant contributions to this study involved modifying the iSALE code to track high-speed, early ejecta in a computationally efficient manner with the model and modifying ejecta scaling laws. Her work will be essential in interpreting the results of the DART mission and more generally in developing planetary defenses against asteroidal threats.

Each panel presentation will end with an interactive Q&A from the Astronauts and the audience.

A light reception follows the presentation so the audience can meet the speakers.

Astronauts include:

- Ron Garan, NASA Astronaut, Writer, Public Speaker

Ron is a retired NASA astronaut who has traveled 71,075,867 miles in 2,842 orbits of our planet during more than 178 days in space and 27 hours and 3 minutes of EVA during four spacewalks. Ron’s last NASA assignment was in NASA’s Open Innovation Initiative, which seeks to increase openness, transparency, collaboration, and innovation within government. In this capacity, Ron has been involved in many global mass collaboration and citizen science programs.He flew on both the US Space Shuttle and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Ron is also an aquanaut and participated in the joint NASA-NOAA,NEEMO-9 mission, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world’s only undersea research laboratory. During this mission he and the crew spent 18 continuous days living and working on the ocean floor.

- Michel Tognini, French test pilot, engineer, Former CNES and ESA astronaut

Tognini enrolled at the French Air Force Academy, Salon de Provence, France, graduating with an engineering degree in 1973. He attended the Empire Test Pilots School, Boscombe Down, United Kingdom, in 1982, and the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Defense Nationale in 1993-94. On May 1, 2003, Brigadier General Tognini was appointed Head of the Astronaut Division at the European Astronaut Center (EAC), Cologne, Germany. Then on March 1, 2005, he was appointed Head of the European Astronaut Centre. He came back to France in November 2011, and became the president of the GAMA (Groupe Aéronautique du Ministere de l'Air); he continued to participate to studies linked to Human Space Mission to Mars or to asteroids. He is President of Space conseil and expert APM (Association Progrès du Management).

- Ed Lu, Asteroid Institute, NASA Astronaut, co-founder B612

Ed Lu served as a NASA Astronaut for twelve years. He flew aboard the Space Shuttle twice, and flew on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station where he did a six-month tour. Lu has been an active research scientist working in the fields of solar physics, astrophysics, plasma physics, cosmology, and planetary science. Previously at Google, he led the Advanced Projects group which built imaging and data gathering systems for Google Earth and Maps, Google StreetView, and Google Books. He currently serves as Executive Director of the B612 Asteroid Institute, where he oversees research to build a dynamic 3-dimensional map of the asteroids in our solar system.

- Dorin Prunariu, Cosmonaut; President, ROMSPACE; Chair, UN COPUOS

Dorin Prunariu is the Vice-President of the European Institute for Risk, Security and Communication Management (EURISC) from Bucharest. He was the President of the Romanian Space Agency full member of the International Academy of Astronautics and is a expert of the Group of Governmental Experts on outer space transparency and confidence-building measures (TCBM), established by the UN. He is also the first and only Romanian to go to space.

This technical briefing will be moderated by:

- Danica Remy, Asteroid Day Co-founder

Danica serves as President of the Asteroid Institute, a program of B612 Foundation, which leads the private sector efforts in research, analysis and systems design to protect Earth from asteroids. Danica also co-founded the international program, Asteroid Day which is supported by the Government of Luxembourg and international space agencies and satellite companies. In 2016 it was sanctioned by the United Nations as an official day to increase global awareness and education of asteroids. The other co-founders are legendary Queen guitarist Dr Brian May, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, and German filmmaker Grigorij Richters.

- Stuart Clark, Astronomer and science journalist, Asteroid Day Editorial Director

An astronomer and award-winning science writer, Stuart holds a first class honours degree and a PhD in astrophysics. His journalism appears in the Guardian, New Scientist, BBC Focus and many other publications. Stuart has a long-standing relationship with Asteroid Day, having been associated with Asteroid Day from the beginning. He is an original Asteroid Day 100X Signatory, and hosted the panel discussion in London’s Science Museum during the first Asteroid Day in 2015. This was one of two broadcasts that launched Asteroid Day to a global audience on 30 June. The other was broadcast from the California Academy of Science that same day.

Participants are hereby informed that by attending this event you are giving permission to be photographed. By entering this event you are giving permission to Asteroid Day, Asteroid Foundation, and other journals, newspapers and publications worldwide to use your image from this event. 

THIS EVENT IS FREE! REGISTER NOW!