Publications by authors named "Michele T Bannister"

Rocket emissions thin the stratospheric ozone layer. To understand if significant ozone losses could occur as the launch industry grows, we examine two scenarios. Our 'ambitious' scenario (2040 launches/year) yields a -0.

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Article Synopsis
  • Large constellations of artificial satellites in low Earth orbit significantly interfere with ground-based astronomy due to their brightness, posing challenges for astronomers.
  • An international optical observation campaign revealed that the prototype satellite BlueWalker 3 reached an apparent magnitude of 0.4, making it one of the brightest objects in the night sky.
  • The anticipated growth of satellite constellations necessitates the development of tracking and avoidance strategies for ground-based telescopes to manage the expected influx of bright satellite objects.
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Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission of NASA, in addition to having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid resulting from an impact under precisely known conditions.

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The global space industry is growing rapidly, with an increasing number of annual rocket launches. Gases and particulates are emitted by rockets directly into the middle and upper atmosphere, where the protective ozone layer resides. These emissions have been shown to damage ozone - highlighting the need for proper management of the upper atmosphere environment.

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Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations that are far too large ( 45°) for this origin. These scattering outliers have previously been proposed to be interlopers from the Oort cloud or evidence of an undiscovered planet. Here we test these hypotheses using N-body simulations and the 69 centaurs and scattering TNOs detected in the Outer Solar Systems Origins Survey and its predecessors.

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