AE Masters Research at AU
As a part of Auburn's Space Technology & Application Research (STAR) Lab led by Dr. Masatoshi Hirabayashi, I focused on simulating impacts on Mercury (and some asteroids) to determine where escaped ejecta ends up.
Note: Detailed information on my research be found in my thesis: Mercury Impact Ejecta's Contribution to its Own Meteoroid Population and the publication Active Main-belt Asteroid (6478) Gault: Constraint on Its Cohesive Strength and the Fate of Ejected Particles in the Solar System. I often tell people that, while my degree is officially in AE, my research was better categorized as Planetary Science.
My research at a glance:
I used impact cratering dynamics and scaling relationships along with N-body orbital dynamics simulations to test if impacts on Mercury are capable of launching surface material beyond its Hill sphere. I then determined how much of this ejected material returns and contributes to Mercury's incoming meteorite population (and how likely the material is to reach other planets). The codes I developed for this investigation can simulate a wide variety of impactors and surfaces.