The R. Kent Nagle Lecture Series
March 9, 2000
Jerrold Marsden speaks about Dynamical Systems and Space Mission Design
Audience: The talk is open and intended for the general public.
Except for parking (see below), it is free.
Date: March 9, 2000
Time: Thursday evening 7:30-8:30 pm
Place: Cooper Hall, Room 103 (CPR 103), at USF-Tampa, just west
of Maple near Elm, south of the Education Building (For a map of the campus,
click here.)
Parking: Parking permits can be obtained for $ 2 each from the
Visitor's Center off the University entrance on Leroy Collins Drive; a limited number
of free permits may be obtained in advance by contacting the Math Dept. by March
1. There is also free satellite parking with shuttle rides to the lecture hall.
Jerrold Marsden
Dynamical Systems and Space Mission Design
A description of the talk: One of the great classical problems
in astrodynamics is the three-body problem: how do three celestial objects
(like the Sun, the Earth, and the moon) move under gravity? Recently, some of the
plans of space missions, and the trajectories of comets, have made use of the mathematics
of the three-body problem, especially techniques from dynamical systems. We will
look at a dynamical connection between certain pairs of periodic orbits, and how
this connection can be used to construct an itinerary for the spacecraft or comet.
In addition, we will look at some related examples, such as a petit grand tour of
the moons of Jupiter, and optimal control techniques for low thrust missions.
A description of the speaker: Jerrold E. Marsden is a Professor
of Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology and is
a Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. He has worked in geometric mechanics, fluid
mechanics, elasticity theory, plasma physics and general field theory. He has written
about 240 papers and 12 books and was a founder of reduction theory for mechanical
systems with symmetry, an active field today. He received the Norbert Wiener prize
of the AMS and SIAM. He has been a Carnegie Fellow, a Killam Fellow, recipient of
the Jeffry-Williams prize, a Miller Professor at the UC Berkeley, a Humboldt Fellow,
and a Fairchild Fellow at Caltech. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts
and Science in 1997, and has served officially for the NSF, the Fields Institute,
the AMS, and several publishing boards.