Patrick Michel is a planetary scientist who began his advanced education with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and Space Techniques in 1993 whereafter he moved to the study of asteroids. He received his PhD in 1997 for a thesis titled "Dynamical evolution of Near-Earth Asteroids". He is a Senior Researcher at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) where he leads the Lagrange Laboratory Planetology group at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice (France). He is specialist of the physical properties and the collisional and dynamical evolution of asteroids. His work on numerical simulations of collisional disruption and asteroid family formation has been the subject of several publications and made the covers of both international journals Nature and Science. He is a co-chair of the MarcoPolo-R sample return mission science team and is a co-I on the NASA OSIRIS-REx and JAXA Hayabusa 2 missions. He is also involved in the AIDA project with NASA and ESA aimed at deflecting the secondary of the binary asteroid Dydimos using a kinetic impactor. He is also responsible of the Work Package on numerical simulations of asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor in the European Consortium NEOShield funded by the FP7 program of the European Commission. He has wide involvement in the IAU and other international organizations (such as the Action Team 14 of COPUOS at the United Nation devoted to Impact Hazard). In 2006 he received the "Young Researcher" prize from the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics, in 2012, he was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal by the Department of Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, and in 2013 he was awarded the Prize Paolo Farinella in recognition of his work on the collisional process.
Physical properties of NEOs from space missions and relevant properties for mitigation.
The lecture will give a short overview on items such as, 1) what we can know (and we do know) about Near-Earth Objects from the ground; 2) theoretical advances that contribute to better understand NEO physical properties; 3) previous space missions to asteroids, with some highlights; 4) physical properties of NEOs, influencin the efficiency of mitigation strategies; 5) next steps to improve our knowledge on NEO physical properties and their response to various processes (e.g. impacts, thermal processes, tidal effects).