Online Presentation

NASA'S Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be the first-ever space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor. On September 26, 2022, the DART spacecraft will crash into the moon of the binary asteroid system Didymos, changing the moon's orbital period. Dr. Knight will give an overview of the mission and discuss his involvement in precisely determining the moon's orbit both before and after the impact.

The Speaker

Matthew Knight is an assistant professor of physics at the U.S. Naval Academy. He received his PhD in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 2008 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral scholar and research scientist at Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, AZ), then as a research scientist at the University of Maryland before moving to USNA. He studies comets, asteroids, interstellar objects, and other small bodies in the solar system.