[Baps] PLS 10/17 – Namya Baijal – Asteroid interiors & Psyche mission

[Saverio Cambioni]

Hello all,

We are excited to announce that Namya Baijal<https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/graduate/students/namya-baijal> (University of Arizona) will be our planetary seminar speaker next week. Namya's research addresses the fundamental question of how collisions affect the evolution of planetary bodies. Her work is relevant to constraining the origin of asteroid (16) Psyche, the target of the NASA Psyche mission<https://psyche.asu.edu/> launching October 12th (this week!). Namya is a student member of the Psyche mission team.

Please join us on Tuesday, October 17 @ 12:30 in 54-517 or on Zoom.
As always, lunch will be provided (in-person only!) and we encourage attendees to arrive a bit early to get food.

Namya will be on campus from 12pm onwards next Monday (10/16) and all-day next Tuesday (10/17). I invite you to find a time to meet with Namya, particularly if you are interested in learning more about seismic events on asteroids (asteroid-quakes!) and the geophysics on these fascinating small worlds. You can sign up for individual meetings here<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15_lQcfAJW4S4xmGqiYjvSl6kJIljP5PkNSubewI2zCc/edit?usp=sharing>.

You can find the talk title, abstract, and Zoom information below. We hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Saverio
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Talk title:  Collisional Modelling of Asteroids: Implications for (16) Psyche and other Large Asteroids

Talk abstract: Understanding the collisional history of small bodies is key to determining their origin, interior structure, global geodesy, and surface degradation over time. Numerical simulations can be used as an effective tool to obtain unique information about the composition and interior structure of major asteroids and, thus, their formation, composition, and evolution. In this talk, I will present simulation results from iSALE-2D and SPH-3D, which we use to simulate the formation of the largest impact craters on two of the most massive asteroids in the Main Belt, (4) Vesta and (16) Psyche. We first assess their impact-seismological properties, assuming porous vs. nonporous interiors and show how porosity plays a key role in attenuating both the seismic wave speed and magnitude. The interior properties govern the extent of expected surface degradation associated with major impact structures. I will comment on the implications of this work on the NASA Psyche mission and the extent to which surface observables can help constrain the interior of this mysterious metal-rich asteroid.

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Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/92448700577
Pw: 54100
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