09/21/2025
Congratulations Taylor!
🎉 Congratulations to Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering student Taylor Davis, who was honored with the NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology Award for her research on an innovative upscaling model to estimate the strength and elasticity of chondrite meteorites using nano-and micro-scale mechanical measurements.
"Taylor is tackling one of the biggest challenges in meteoritics with a bold new approach that could reshape how we understand — and prepare for — asteroid impacts," says Christian Hoover, an associate professor at the ASU School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. "This is a game-changer. Most meteorites arrive on Earth as small fragments, making traditional strength testing at the centimeter scale either impossible or destructive."
Hoover and School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU Research Professor Laurence Garvie with ASU Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies co-supervise Davis' interdisciplinary work that blends mechanics with astromaterials.
"I am developing a minimally destructive method to connect small-scale, or nanoscale, hardness measurements to larger-scale meteorite strength using the concept of friability, or how easily material crumbles and loses mass," says Davis, who is pursuing her doctorate in civil engineering at the ASU School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.
"This work will help predict how asteroids fragment, re-accumulate and evolve after impacts, improving models of asteroid dynamics and contributing to planetary defense strategies," Davis says. "Both mechanical properties and friability of meteorites are less than thoroughly understood in planetary science, and thus this work aims to fill a knowledge gap that currently exists in this field." 🚀 🪨
