Join us at Silverquare Liberté in Luxembourg for a motivational conversation about the importance of studying asteroids from a celebrity communicator, silicon valley tech leader and world renowned planetary scientist. Hear from Danica Remy, President and Chief Executive of B612 Foundation, PatrickMichel, the Principal Investigator of the ESA Hera mission, and Phil Plait, US based YouTube star as they host a multifaceted conversation about the importance of asteroid research and missions. Following the talk audience members will have a chance to ask their own questions and mix and mingle with the speakers.
This program is brought to you by the Asteroid Foundation and their partners at Silversquare, the Luxembourg Space Agency, Broadcasting Center Europe, OHB Systems, SES, the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, B612 Foundation and the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT).
Experts Participating in the Event
- Danica Remy
Danica is President and chief executive of B612 Foundation, which leads the private sector efforts in research, analysis, and systems design to protect Earth from asteroids. Danica co-founded the international program Asteroid Day along with legendary Queen guitarist Dr. Brian May; Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 Foundation co-founder Rusty Schweickart; and German filmmaker Grigorij Richters. Asteroid Day is supported by the Government of Luxembourg and international space agencies, and in 2016 the United Nations sanctioned it as an official day to increase global awareness of asteroids.
- Patrick Michel
Dr. Patrick Michel is the Principal Investigator of the ESA Hera mission and the lead of the team Theories and Observations in Planetology (TOP) at the Laboratory Lagrange/CNRS of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France. With more than 200 publications in peer- reviewed international journals, he is Director of Research at CNRS and acts as project manager and Coordinator of the NEO-MAPP project. He leads or highly contributes to research projects and space missions devoted to asteroid science and defense. He is also co-chair of the cooperation AIDA involving scientists on both NASA DART and ESA Hera, is President of the Near-Earth Object Working of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and a member of the steering committee of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). His research includes studies of the collisional process between small bodies, the origin and dynamical evolution of Near-Earth Objects, their physical properties and their response to impacts, tidal effects, spin-up and shaking.
- Phil Plait
Dr. Phil Plait is an astronomer, author, and enthusiastic science evangelist. After getting his PhD in astronomy using the Hubble Space Telescope, he worked on calibrating and using a new camera launched on the Space Shuttle Atlantis and installed on Hubble in 1997. It was around that time that he realized he loved talking about astronomy as much as doing it, and started the career in science communication for which he is best known.He has appeared on television as an expert on dozens of programs, most recently on the Science Channel’s “How the Universe Works”, which has featured him in all of its ten-season run; he is currently a science consultant for the show as well. He wrote and hosted the phenomenally popular “Crash Course Astronomy” which currently has 70 million views. He’s also given two TEDx talks on science and astronomy — both featured on the main TED site and have well over four million views between them. One of them is about the dangers of asteroid impacts on Earth, apropos of Asteroid Day.