Reminder: ANSS Seminar 1/15, Benjamin Fernando

[Barnhart, William D]

Hello Network Seismology Community and Beyond! Mailing List Sign Up Seminar Series Info and Schedule Previous Seminar Recordings Join us for our next seminar! January 15th, 2 pm Mountain: Benjamin Fernando - Johns Hopkins University - Seismoacoustic tracking of re-entering space debris Click this link to join!   Abstract:  As Earth orbit grows more crowded, the rate at which disused spacecraft are re-entering the atmosphere has grown near-exponentially. Each re-entry (of which there were multiple per day in 2025) poses a threat to life and infrastructure in the air and on the ground - fragments of debris which survive to reach the ground may be toxic, flammable, or even radioactive. A persistent problem in space situational awareness is the difficulty of tracking said debris once it is burning up in the atmosphere, making the fall-out locations of fragments challenging to predict. In this talk, I will discuss how seismic and acoustic measurements offer an open-source dataset which can be used to constrain the disintegration dynamics of re-entering debris, with a view to better predicting where fragments may have landed in order to minimise their environmental impacts.  Bio: Benjamin Fernando is a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford in the UK. Ben's research focusses on seismoacoustic modelling and data analysis as applied to studies of the Earth and other planets. Ben is also a member of the science teams for NASA’s InSight, Farside Seismic Suite, and Dragonfly missions.  Do you have an idea for a seminar topic? Get in touch with the seminar committee (Will Yeck, Gabrielle Tepp, Fabia Terra, Mairi Litherland, Kyren Bogolub, and Bill Barnhart)

-- 

William Barnhart, PhD

Assistant Coordinator

USGS Earthquake Hazards Program

wbar...@usgs.gov

c: 319-834-0674

o: 303-273-8591