Shore Leave 44 Guest: Timothy C Miller
- Keepers of the Blue Flame: NASA's Planetary Defense Program and Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)
Dr. Miller is the Chief Scientist of the Seeker and Information Processing Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD, where he works on various NASA space and astrophysics projects. While hunting astrophysical neutrinos earlier in his career, he traveled to Antarctica six times and to Greenland once. He also received a NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) grant to look at measuring the depth of the ice sheets on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, a possible first step toward the search for life on such moons, by detecting the interactions of ultra-high energy neutrinos from an orbiting spacecraft. He's previously given presentations on DART and Antarctic astrophysics research at Shore Leave and other conventions. He's recently served as the Image Analysis Lead on NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, set for launch in 2021 and a rendezvous with asteroid Didymos B in 2022.
DART will be NASA's first test of planetary defense via kinetic deflection. Dr. Miller will tell us all about DART and NASA's planetary defense program in general, including contrasts between Hollywood versions of the concept and the soon-to-be real thing.