Dr. Bong Wie
Department of Aerospace Engineering
2271 Howe Hall, Room 2355
Ames, Iowa 50011-2271
Office Phone: (515) 294-3124
FAX: (515) 294-3262
Dr. Bong Wie is the Vance Coffman Endowed Chair Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University (http://www.aere.iastate.edu/department-overview/faculty/bong-wie/). He is the founding director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Collaboration that was established in April 2008. Dr. Wie received his B.S. of Aeronautical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1975. He then received his M.S. and Ph.D in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 1978 and 1981, respectively. He is the author of AIAA textbook Space Vehicle Dynamics and Control (2nd edition, 2008). He has published 170 technical papers and 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, and holds three U.S. patents on control-moment-gyro (CMG) steering logic. In 2006, the AIAA presented Dr. Wie with the Mechanics and Control of Flight Award for his innovative research on advanced control of complex spacecraft such as solar sails, large flexible space structures, and agile imaging satellites equipped with CMGs. He was the PI of numerous research projects from NASA, including a recent NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) Phase 2 study (9/15/12 – 12/30/14) for developing an innovative, but yet technically and economically feasible, solution to NASA’s near-Earth object (NEO) Impact Threat Mitigation Grand Challenge. A HAIV (Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle) mission concept was developed through the NIAC Phase 2 study. His current research effort is focused on further developing an experimental HAIV flight demonstration project in collaboration with the Emergency Asteroid Defence Project (http://asteroiddefence.com). His new AIAA textbook, entitled Space Vehicle Guidance, Control and Astrodynamics, is scheduled for publication in late 2015.
Dr. John Basart
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering
2271 Howe Hall, Room 3261
Ames, Iowa 50011-2271
Office Phone: (515) 294-8487
Dr. John Basart joined the ADRC in 2008, when it was created. Dr. Basart received his BS, MS, and Ph.D degrees all at Iowa State University in Electrical Engineering. He is now a Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering here at Iowa State and his area of expertise is in Electromagnetics and Signal/Image Processing, although he likes to consider himself a “generalist,” with a little bit of knowledge in everything.
Dr. Basart worked in the Air Force repairing electrical systems on KC-97 and B-47 medium-range bombers after high school. Then, after graduating from Iowa State, he accepted a post-doctoral position at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, VA. After two years there, he was invited to return to Iowa State and create a radio astronomy program. After 10 years at ISU, he left for Socorro, NM to work for the NRAO’s VLA radio telescope for several years, before coming back to Iowa State in 1981. In 1985, Dr. Basart joined the newly formed Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) with a split appointment between the Electrical Engineering Department and the CNDE. In 1990 he became the ISU Campus Coordinator for the Iowa Space Grant Consortium. He continued these activities until his retirement in 2000. During his tenure in the Electrical Engineering Department, he created many courses with the final course being AerE/EE 264, a sophomore-level course designed to attract technically oriented, by non-aerospace students to encourage them to become involved in space-related activities. He has been volunteering at Iowa State since retirement, teaching a few courses, and mentoring Senior Design projects in addition to his work at the ADRC. He retains his interest in NDE as an associate editor with the journal NDT & E International.
At the ADRC, Dr. Basart is currently involved in researching the Yarkovsky Effect. This is a phenomenon caused by the sun heating one side of a rotating body in space. As the object rotates, the warmest location on the body is not directly “beneath” the sun, but off to one side due to thermal inertia. Due to its warmth, the body radiates electromagnetic radiation in the infrared portion of the spectrum. The infrared photons carry momentum causing a recoil force on the body with the tangential component either along, or opposite to, the orbital direction. This force component can either increase or decrease the size of the orbit. This effect could potentially be used in deflecting an asteroid if it were predicted to impact Earth; however, the asteroid would need to be detected far in advance as to allow time for this effect to have a significant impact. Predicting the amount of deflection is extremely complex, as asteroids are not perfect spheres or simple geometric shapes. Currently, Dr. Basart is working on simplifying the problem by analyzing simple objects such as rectangular boxes and cylinders in space, but this too involves differential equations with complex boundary conditions.