Research scientist in planetary astronomy at the Southwest Research Institute, supporting NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, and developing the post-Pluto mission into the Kuiper Belt. Expert in the dynamics of binary minor planets, detection and characterization of trans-Neptunian objects, and the origin of the architecture of our Solar System.
Leading and trailing Neptune in its orbit around the Sun are two swarms of small worlds called Trojans. Neptune’s Trojans were likely captured from the disk that Neptune migrated through during the early evolution of the outer solar system, and their current properties can reveal properties of that primordial disk and how Neptune interacted with it.
Read MoreThe Flicker cubesat mission proposal was developed for the first NASA SIMPLEx call for planetary science cubesat missions. It would be an innovative 6U observatory carrying three telescopes with ultra-fast wide-field cameras to catch the momentary flicker of light when a distant object in the Kuiper Belt briefly occults a background star.
Read MoreThe giant space observatory JWST will be a powerful tool for studying the properties of dwarf planets and trans-Neptunian Objects.
Read MoreProcessing of hyperspectral and time-series imagery to reveal features buried by contamination from noise, background sources, or foreground sources.
Read MoreImpact crater records across the solar system can provide powerful insights into the populations of objects bombarding these surfaces.
Read MoreIf New Horizons was to visit any worlds beyond Pluto, they would have to be searched for in the years after the mission left Earth. The challenge of finding a tiny, faint Kuiper Belt Object target for the mission was compounded by the location where targetable objects resided in the sky: directly in line with the core of our galaxy, in some of the most crowded star fields in the sky.
Read MoreThe worlds beyond Neptune are unique throughout the solar system in their propensity to have binary companions.
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