Episode description

Arushi Nath is a high school student who developed a passion for asteroid research when she attended the biennial Planetary Defense Conference in 2021. Since then, Arushi has been applying her coding skills in hunting for asteroids and contributing many new findings to the objects that astronomers are tracking as potential hazards to our planet. Arushi explains her work around NASA's DART mission, which successfully tested the ability of a probe to impact and redirect a moonlet orbiting a faraway asteroid, and she discusses the national and international conferences she has attended. Those interested in the asteroid collision simulation that Arushi mentions can find it on NASA's website at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc23/. Arushi is looking forward to the next Planetary Defense Conference in 2025, and we're looking forward to hearing more from this extraordinary young citizen scientist who offers a very bright and hopeful voice for the future.