Free program on March 8 features Dr. Bong Wie, Vance Coffman Faculty Chair of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University
Kirkwood Community College will present its 44th Mel Oliven Lecture on March 8 at 11:15 a.m. in Ballantyne Auditorium on the Cedar Rapids main campus. Dr. Bong Wie, Vance Coffman Faculty Chair of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University, will present an innovative yet practical solution to preventing an armageddon.
Historical evidence suggests that the potential for major catastrophe created by an asteroid or comet impacting Earth is very real and human mankind must be prepared for it. This talk presents an overview of planetary defense issues, including an innovative yet practical solution to NASA’s near-Earth object (NEO) impact threat mitigation grand challenge and its flight validation mission design.
Dr. Wie is the founding director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center at Iowa State University. The center has been doing research in the field of asteroid deflection since it’s opening in 2008. He is the author of AIAA textbook Space Vehicle Dynamics and Control (2nd edition, 2008), AIAA textbook Space Vehicle Guidance, Control and Astrodynamics (2015) and he has published 170 technical papers, including 60 peer-review journal articles. He holds three U.S. patents on control-moment-gyro (CMG) steering logic. He was the PI of numerous NASA research projects, including a NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) Phase 2 study for developing an innovative, but technically and economically feasible, solution to NASA’s near-Earth object (NEO) Impact Threat Mitigation Grand Challenge. A HAIV (Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle) mission concept has been developed through the NIAC Phase 2 study and his current research effort is focused on further developing an experimental HAIV flight validation mission in collaboration with the Emergency Asteroid Defence Project.
The Mel Oliven Lecture series is presented to educate Kirkwood students and the public on scientific and environmental issues. The Oliven Lecture began in 1977 and is the longest running lecture series at Kirkwood. It was founded in memory of Mel Oliven, longtime Astronomy and Physics professor at Kirkwood Community College. This lecture is made possible by the Oliven Endowment of the Kirkwood Foundation.