MPS-Ascend: Reading natural information stored in granular materials through oblique impacts

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。 埃斯特班·赖特被授予NSF数学和物理科学上升博士后研究奖学金（NSF MPS-Ascend），以开展与扩大STEM中代表性不足的群体的参与有关的研究和活动计划。Esteban Wright博士在一名赞助科学家的指导下，利用这项研究金支持他的研究项目“MPS-Ascend：通过斜向撞击阅读储存在颗粒材料中的自然信息”。该研究金的主办机构是马里兰州大学帕克分校，赞助科学家是沃尔夫冈·洛塞特博士。小行星表面是令人难以置信的复杂和多样化的环境，在细粒风化层旁边有几米大的巨石。表面的多分散性质延伸到地下，在地下对颗粒材料的组成、孔隙率或尺寸分布知之甚少。这些环境容易受到微陨石或从表面射入亚轨道轨道的物质的表面撞击。小行星也经历热压缩和松弛，由于它们的快速旋转速度。这两个过程都有助于压缩循环力，可以印在粮食的记忆。该项目旨在研究斜撞击的动力学，以此作为探测颗粒中储存的信息的手段。颗粒系统的撞击实验提供了一种仅从表面相互作用研究地下颗粒系统的方法。这在空间飞行任务中是一个主要的优点，特别是那些配备着陆器或专门设计的撞击器以测试表面反应或确定着陆点的飞行任务。该项目涉及多学科领域（如计算物理和工程），包括不同学术背景的学生。更广泛地说，具有少数民族背景的国际物理学家在马里兰州大学的外联活动中发挥了积极作用，如马里兰州日和GRADMAP，这是一个旨在扩大物理学和天文学界多样性和代表性的组织，使物理学和天文学领域处于领导地位的活跃的代表性不足的个人的可见度。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得支持通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Esteban Wright is awarded an NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (NSF MPS-Ascend) to conduct a program of research and activities related to broadening participation by groups underrepresented in STEM. This fellowship to Dr. Esteban Wright supports his research project entitled " MPS-Ascend: Reading natural information stored in granular materials through oblique impacts", under the mentorship of a sponsoring scientist. The host institution for the fellowship is the University of Maryland, College Park, and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Wolfgang Losert. Asteroid surfaces are incredibly complex and diverse environments with large boulders several meters in size alongside fine-grained regolith. The polydisperse nature of the surface extends to the subsurface where little is known about the composition, porosity, or size distribution of the granular material. These environments are subject to surface impacts from micrometeorites or material ejected from the surface into suborbital trajectories. Asteroids also experience thermal compression and relaxation due to their fast rotation speeds. Both of these processes contribute to compressive cycling forces that can be imprinted in the grain's memory. This project aims to study the dynamics of oblique impacts as a means to probe this stored information in the grains. Impact experiments into granular systems provide a way to study subsurface granular systems from surface interactions alone. This is a major advantage in the context of space missions, especially those equipped with landers, or with specially designed impactors for testing the surface response or for determining landing sites. This project involves multidisciplinary fields (such as computational physics and engineering) and includes students of diverse academic backgrounds. More broadly, an active role by the PI, who is of minority background, in such outreach events at the University of Maryland as Maryland Day and GRADMAP, an organization aimed at expanding diversity and representation in the physics and astronomy communities, enables visibility of active underrepresented individuals in leadership positions within physics and astronomy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.