Assistant professor Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, who started working on the project as a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , has now taken the lead as the principal investigator, funded through a $848,013 grant from NASA for the next three years.
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NASA’s latest launch into outer space is going to make an impact. In fact, that’s its entire mission.
It’s all part of a long-term planetary defense strategy to avoid an “Armageddon” scenario, and NAU planetary scientist Cristina Thomas is part of the team studying this event.
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Here are a bunch of places where Cristina appeared in media reports over the past couple of weeks:
DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), which is scheduled to launch at 10:20 p.m. PST on Nov. 23 out of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, is NASA’s first planetary defense mission. This mission will demonstrate asteroid deflection via kinetic impact. The goal is to collide with the target to see how the orbit changes. It’s a test run to see if such a plan is feasible should we find an asteroid on a collision course with… Read more