Asteroid Deflection Team 2 placed 2nd in EAP University Grant Competition
Image of Asteroid 99942 Apophis taken from the Sormano Astronomical Observatory in 2004
One of this semester’s senior design teams, Asteroid Deflection Team 2, entered their project in the Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) EAP University Grant Competition and received second place for the fall competition. Ben Geadelmann, Jacob Feltis, Austin Langford, and Yuh Ming Mok spent this past semester working on the design project “Asteroid Deflection Using a Dynamic Gravity Tractor” sponsored by AEM Professor Yohannes Ketema. The team focused on creating a gravity tractor vehicle for deflecting Asteroid 99942 Apophis which is an asteroid that is predicted to have a close encounter with Earth in 2029. Their work also included designing the transfer trajectory to Apophis, as well as the trajectories near the asteroid that are required to create the deflection.
AGI holds their student competition, the EAP University Grant Competition, every summer and fall. Graduate and undergraduate students are invited to design a solution to their problem of choice and enter the competition. This gives students the opportunity to showcase their creative and problem solving skills using AGI’s STK program to develop their project.
Last Modified: 2018-01-10 at 09:04:18 -- this is in International Standard Date and Time Notation