Episode 54: Imaging asteroids with Joe Aebersold

Joe Aebersold

Texas State University’s Joe Aebersold, team leader for Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss his work imaging samples of the asteroid Bennu returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx mission.  

After the mission team recovered the sample return cannister from its landing site in the Utah desert, Aebersold acquired the imagery in his role as a grant specialist with TXST’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs’ (ORSP) Johnson Space Center Engineering & Technical Support (JETS) program. He and his colleague Erika Blumenfeld are charged with documenting the samples with high-resolution photography and 3D models before the materials—which range in size from large pebbles to dust—are distributed to eager researchers.

Aebersold graduated from TXST in 2016 with a geographic information science degree. His journey to NASA began with a 2015 internship working on NASA’s astronaut photography cataloging program through ORSP-JETS. That internship led to another in the summer of 2016 to work with Jacobs Engineering’s Image Science Analysis Group. There he learned to operate a structured light scanner to make 3D models. In 2017 Jacobs hired him to a full-time position, paving the way to his current role with NASA. 

Big Ideas TXST is part of the TXST Podcast Network.