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

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。Esteban Wright被授予NSF数学和物理科学提升博士后研究奖学金(NSF MPS-Ascend)，以开展一项与扩大STEM中代表性不足的群体的参与相关的研究和活动。Esteban Wright博士的这一奖学金支持了他在一位赞助科学家的指导下进行的题为《MPS-Ascend：通过斜撞击读取存储在颗粒状材料中的自然信息》的研究项目。该奖学金的主办机构是马里兰大学帕克学院，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，有几米大的巨石和细粒的风化层。表面的多分散性延伸到次表面，在那里人们对颗粒材料的成分、孔隙率或尺寸分布知之甚少。这些环境受到微陨石或从表面抛出的物质进入亚轨道轨道的表面影响。由于小行星的快速自转速度，它们也会经历热压缩和热松弛。这两个过程都有助于压缩循环力，这种压力可以印记在谷物的记忆中。这个项目的目的是研究斜撞击的动力学，作为探索这种储存在颗粒中的信息的一种手段。颗粒系统的撞击实验提供了一种仅从表面相互作用来研究地下颗粒系统的方法。这在空间飞行任务中是一大优势，特别是那些配备着陆器或特别设计的撞击器以测试表面反应或确定着陆点的任务。该项目涉及多学科领域(如计算物理和工程)，并包括不同学术背景的学生。更广泛地说，少数族裔背景的PI在马里兰大学的外展活动中扮演的积极角色，如马里兰日和GRADMAP，一个旨在扩大物理学和天文学社区的多样性和代表性的组织，使活跃的、代表性不足的个人在物理学和天文学领域的领导职位变得引人注目。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.