NONFICTION
Articles for NASA Website
Hide and Seek – How NASA’s Lucy Mission Team Discovered Eurybates' Satellite
An article I wrote for NASA's website explaining how the Lucy Mission team discovered Queta, a satellite of their asteroid targets. A team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center also made an animated video based on my article, which they released along with it.
Note: This article is an updated version of an article I previously wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission official website. View the original version here.
How Were the Trojan Asteroids Discovered and Named?
An article I wrote for NASA's website explaining how the first Trojan asteroids were discovered and named. The article was released on the anniversary of the discovery of the first Trojan asteroid, and it was featured on the social media accounts of NASA Solar System, NASA Goddard, NASA's Lucy Mission, and NASA History Office.
Note: This article is an updated version of an article I previously wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission official website. View the original version here.
Articles for NASA's Lucy Mission Website
Queta - The Story Behind the Name
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission website on the origins of the name selected for Eurybates' satellite, Queta.
Chasing an Asteroid’s Shadow
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission website explaining the importance of asteroid occultations for planetary science, and why people travel around the world for a chance to stand in the shadows of asteroids.
How to Start a NASA Mission (in Many Not-So-Easy Steps)
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission website explaining the NASA Discovery Class mission selection process as experienced by Lucy's PI and Deputy PI.
The Mind-Bogglingly Big Journey Ahead
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission website explaining the distance and velocity scales involved in the spacecraft's journey, as well as how flyby sequences are planned. To find many of the relevant values for this article, I also had to extract and run calculations with the position and velocity data from Lucy's SPICE kernels using SpiceyPy (a Python wrapper for SPICE).
The L'TES Instrument
An article I wrote for the official website of NASA's Lucy Mission explaining Lucy's Thermal Emission Spectrometer (L'TES).
The L'Ralph Instrument
An article I wrote for the official website of NASA's Lucy Mission explaining the spacecraft's L'Ralph instrument, which is made up of the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) and the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA).
The L'LORRI Instrument
An article I wrote for the official website of NASA's Lucy Mission explaining Lucy's LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (L'LORRI).
Rocket Science (Literally)
An article I wrote for the official website of NASA's Lucy Mission explaining the history of launch vehicles and exploring Lucy's launch vehicle, ULA's Atlas V 401.
Hide and Seek – Discovering Eurybates' Satellite
An article I wrote for the official website of NASA's Lucy Mission explaining how the science team discovered a satellite of one of their asteroid targets.
Why Are They Called Trojan Asteroids? - NASA's Lucy Mission
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission explaining the discovery of the first Trojan asteroids, as well as the origins of their names.
What's In a Logo? - NASA's Lucy Mission
An article I wrote for NASA's Lucy Mission breaking down the origins and significance of the mission insignia.
Article for MIT Angles
Headspace: How Space Travel Affects Astronaut Mental Health
An article I wrote for MIT Angles on the neuropsychological effects of space travel. This work has been cited in several publications on the topic, including academic papers, web articles, a video, and the book Why Am I Taller?: What Happens to an Astronaut's Body in Space. This article was also used to introduce the topic of mental health on crewed space missions for students in NASA's HUNCH program in 2022.
