From a report submitted to the Endowment Committee by Terik Daly, Johns Hopkins University.
The Community Grant from the Meteoritical Society supported the travel of and enabled in-person presentations for three students at the 9th Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) who would otherwise would have been unable to participate in the conference. The 2025 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference was held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, from May 5 – 9, 2025. The recipients of student travel funding were:
- Lucas Barbero Sanchez, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
- Adrienne Rudolph, PhD student at University of Maryland College Park, United States
- Lisa Wier, Oklahoma State University – Stillwater, United States
Lucas Barbero gave an oral presentation titled, “Trajectory and CubeSat Mission Design for Plasma Physics Observations during the 2029 Apophis Flyby”. Ms. Rudolph gave two oral presentations titled, “TERP RAPTOR (Terrapin Engineered Rideshare Probe for Rapid-response Asteroid Apophis Profiling, Tracking, Observing, and Reconnaissance): Mission Concept Development” and “TREx: A Temporarily-Captured Orbiter Rendezvous Explorer & In-Situ Characterization Mission”. Ms. Wier presented a poster titled, “Risk Perception of Near-Earth Objects as Hazards: A Research Design”.
The recipients of student travel grants expressed gratitude for the support that made their participation in the conference possible.