Asteroid Day takes place every year on 30 June — a date that marks the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska event, where a meteor destroyed 2,150 km2 of landmass (an area just a little smaller than Luxembourg) across a forest in Russian Siberia.
Co-founded in 2014, Asteroid Day is the brainchild of physicist Stephen Hawking, B612 Foundation president Danica Remy, astronaut Rusty Schweickart, film-maker Grigorij Richters and astrophysicist (and Queen guitarist) Brian May.
Now recognised by the UN, Asteroid Day is celebrated globally to raise awareness about asteroids and their potential impact on Earth. It also raises awareness of the potential to mine asteroids as we move towards a space economy.
My guests this week are:
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Three phenomenal women in space share their stories with us this weekend in Luxembourg for Asteroid Day.
Read further: ‘Asteroid Day Festival’ to take place at Cercle Cité over the weekend
Julie Payette joined the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in 1992 as a member of the Canadian Astronaut Corps. She completed two spaceflights, logging more than 25 days in space. Dr. Payette also served as capsule communicator (CapCom) at NASA Mission Control Center in Houston and served as CSA’s chief astronaut from 2000 to 2007.
Julie was named COO for the Montreal Science Centre in July 2013. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Queen Elizabeth II had approved the appointment of Payette as the next governor general of Canada — a role she held from October 2017 to January 2021.
Wanda Díaz-Merced was born in Puerto Rico and lost her eyesight gradually through her teenage years into early adulthood. She talks about this experience and her long journey to become an astronomer, using sonification to turn large data sets into audible sound.
Her breakthrough into the field began after receiving an internship with Robert Candey, an incredible mentor to her, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA — before she went on to complete a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Glasgow. Wanda was then accepted as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics (Harvard & Smithsonian), and the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.
Dr Díaz-Merced continues to create sonification software to perceive space in a different sensory way and her work has also included collaborations with the European Gravitational Observatoryproposal REINFORCE and the National Astronomical Observatory Japan (NAOJ). She currently works at the European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina, Italy, where she is the Director of the Arecibo Observatory.
Hoor Abdelraman AlMaazmi is a space science researcher at the UAE Space Agency and a member of the Emirates Mars Mission science team since 2017. The Mars mission, named ‘Amal’ or ‘Hope,’ launched in 2020.
The UAE plans to send a spaceship to explore the solar system’s main asteroid belt —with an expected launch date in 2028. For this mission, they will look at six asteroids with the target to land on the seventh: Justitia. This asteroid is thought to be one of only two known red asteroids and potentially laden with organic substances.
The aim for this MBR Explorer is to deploy a landing craft to study the surface of Justitia, an initiative fully developed by private UAE start-up companies.
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Tune in to The Lisa Burke Show on Today Radio Saturdays at 11am, Sundays at noon, and Tuesdays at 10am.
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