Dr. Raphael Marschall

Hello to all new followers! I'm a 🇨🇭 physicist and planetary scientist at the Observatory in Nice 🇫🇷. I study asteroids, comets, and similar bodies and how they formed/evolved. This helps us understand how our Solar System formed. I'm also involved in several space missions. #planetaryScience 🔭🧪🚀🛰️☄️🪨

Good overview! I hope MMX🇯🇵 will finally resolve the question of how the moons of Mars formed. And perhaps also, whether Phobos could be the site of a future crewed base from where humans could explore Mars remotely (initially). Really impressive how Japan has built upon the legacy of Hayabusa! 🚀🛰️🪐

Congratulations to JAXA on the successful launch of the Martian Moon eXplorer (MMX) yesterday! MMX will bring back a sample from the Martian moon Phobos. Phobos may have formed during a giant impact on Mars, which would make the MMX sample Martian... #planetSci www.youtube.com/live/Fn6gzuG...

The first is about tracking the trajectories of dust particles around #comet #67P and led to this publication by Abhinav Jindal, @browngeomorphlab.bsky.social, and @spacemarschall.net. Lots of dust falls back on the surface, changing it's properties, which we want to model bsky.app/profile/nick...

#OnThisDay 🔟 years ago, 30 September 2016, ESA's Rosetta mission ended with a landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 12 years after its journey started 🧪🔭 @esa.int @science.esa.int @cnes.fr @dlr-de.bsky.social @operations.esa.int #Space #History #SpaceHistory

I said I'd do a thread about my new Space Science Reviews paper, so here it is! This is part of a collection of papers arising from a meeting at the International Space Science Institute in Bern in 2024: a workshop to better understand rocky extrasolar planets. A 🧵:

NASA released a bunch of 16 and 35mm film engineering footage of the Artemis II launch today. Naturally I knew what I had to do with it.

Big milestone for us at the @unibe.ch! The laser altimeter BELA, built under our leadership, was operated successfully for the first time after leaving our facilities exactly 10 years ago. BepiColombo, BELA, and all of us are now ready for science at Mercury starting in March 2027! #planetSci

In case you have missed it, we are hosting a super cool workshop on #exoplanets studies in Garching, Vitacura and Nice (YES, 3 places at the same time!!!) in November. Bridging Horizons: Harnessing ESO's current facilities for the dawn of exoplanet population studies Dates: **2-6 November 2026**

When we do outreach or education, astronomers frequently claim that public and student interest in astronomy is greater than in other sciences, making it an ideal entry way for science. My article analyzing Wikipedia page views which (somewhat) supports this claim is out in the CAP Journal. 🔭⚛️🧪🎢

I am determined to prove that you can be largely anti-AI but also not be an asshole. The attitudes of some people on this site will NOT win over any minds or win you over any favours. If you insult someone, you are doing it to a real person. And it sucks!

I needed something spectacular, and here it is: a view of the August 12 solar eclipse as seen from South Korea's Danuri satellite, in orbit around the Moon. You can see the lunar shadow sweeping across Greenland. 🔭🧪 www.mt.co.kr/amp/tech/202...

There's a missing rung on the academic career ladder in Austria and Germany. Historically there wasn't a position like assistant professor or lecturer, so the jump from postdoc to professor was — and mostly still is — huge. Between 70% and 80% of academics in Austria don't have permanent jobs.

Short but great look at waves on strings from Minute Physics. #physics youtu.be/sYdXa_yp0fc?...

We are used to seeing weird shapes of small asteroids, but this is next level! look at the shape of 44 Nysa from Minker et al. This is 75 km volume-equivalent diameter object! Also it has a satellite! #planetSci 🧪

#planetSci

Our latest paper has been accepted for publication! 🎉 We demonstrated that a single late infall event perturbing the outer disk can trigger the formation of multiple giant planets and ringed disk structures resembling those observed around young stars. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2607.18370

#academicsky

📢 Join my group at the @unibe.ch as a PhD student in #planetSci. Work on how impacts and sublimation shape comets and other icy bodies using experiments and numerical modelling. 📆 Start Date: Jan. 2027 or by arrangement ⏳ Apply by 30 Sept 2026: jobs.unibe.ch/job-vacancie...

I love the tradition at #ACM of naming asteroids to honour members of our community for their contributions to the field. Congratulations to many of my friends and colleagues! The full list is here: www.wgsbn-iau.org/files/Bullet...

Michael Küppers - Comet Interceptor is late 2028/early 2029 - on track for a December 2028 launch date. This updated launch date means that Comet Interceptor's tanks can be filled up as ARIEL (which it was supposed to hitch a ride to L2 is further delayed) #ACM2026

Excited to be in beautiful Poznań, Poland, for Asteroids Comets Meteors (ACM), one of my favorite conferences 🤩 #acm2026

I’ve been exploring gravitational reaccumulation after asteroid catastrophic disruptions and am finding contact binaries are super common outcomes! I can’t help but notice how similar Torifune looks compared to this fragment from one of my simulations, which I will present tomorrow at #ACM2026

Great week-end for small bodies ! Hayabusa 2# flyby of asteroid Torifune (www.jaxa.jp/press/2026/0...) and Tianwen-2 images of asteroid Kamo'oalewa (www.xinhuanet.com/20260706/eb8...) ! #PlanetaryScience

It's a day of fab asteroid news! 🤩 Image drop from yesterday's Japanese Space Agency JAXA high-speed close flyby of asteroid #Torifune (~450m across). This is the extension mission of #Hayabusa2, after its successful 2020 asteroid-sample collection from Ryugu. Next stop: another asteroid in 2031 🤩🔭🧪

🛰️ On a même un premier film du passage d'Hayabusa-2 au plus près de l'astéroïde 😲 La sonde est passée à un peu moins d'1km, avec une vitesse relative de 5,3km/s ! 📸 JAXA

Für alle im Raum Bern, welche morgen Freitag, 8. Mai um 16:30 noch nichts los haben, gebe ich an der @unibe.ch einen öffentlichen Vortrag über "die Lucy-Mission zu den Jupiter-Trojanern und was sie uns über die Entstehung des Sonnensystems sagen wird". Details: www.physik.unibe.ch/ueber_uns/ak...

A me-occultation 🤪

40 years ago, the Giotto mission was writing history:  🛰️ ESA's first deep space mission ☄️ first cometary close flyby ⏰ and later on, first reactivation of a spacecraft The success of Giotto inspired our Rosetta mission and together laid the foundation for our Comet Interceptor mission. 🔭 🧪 1/3

Any Sydney-based astronomers here? A team at Andalucia is coordinating an occultation campaign for one of Jupiter's small (2-5km) irregular moons, #Kallichore (a candidate for an #ESAJuice flyby) that'll be passing in front of a star at ~12:20UT on March 18th. opop.obspm.fr/media/data/c...

It still seems unreal to me that humans will soon be flying back to the moon! They will be returning to Earth at a speed of 40.000 km/h, the fastest ever reentry of a crewed spacecraft. This remastered video shows a similar reentry from the #Artemis 1 mission back in 2022 at 9x speed. 🔭🧪

I've ~stabilized a short piece. Awesome video! 👍

What was I looking down on here? A) clouds B) ocean C) snow dunes It was really quite the view 🤩

Just arrived in Bremen, Germany, to go work on an ESA M8 mission proposal and the airport here has a beautiful model of the International Space Station (ISS) 🤩

It‘s a beautiful day here in Bern and my first day as a professor at the @unibe.ch. Excited but also humbled about what is to come. Wishing everyone a good start into this new week!

You may have seen pictures, but have you ever seen video of a gigantic jet #TLE from space? Astronaut Jeanette Epps captured this incredible sequence on July 20th, 2024 for the DTU/@science.esa.int Thor-Davis experiment. 🧪🔭 youtu.be/xN2J7_rOBJY Credit: ESA/NASA/J. Epps Processing: Simeon Schmauß

Hi y'all You still have a few days to apply for our open professor position in planetary science in Bern, Switzerland. See more details below! For any questions, feel free to reach out to me. 🔭🧪⚛️#planetSci

Hi y'all You still have a few days to apply for our open professor position in planetary science in Bern, Switzerland. See more details below! For any questions, feel free to reach out to me. 🔭🧪⚛️#planetSci

On Monday, we're going to be arXiv-official! 🔭☄️ We just submitted a short paper outlining our project to the arXiv 🥳

Are you looking for a postdoc position working on asteroids and comets? Would it help if it's in a beautiful place in southern France? If yes, then consider applying to the following position of my colleague Benoit Carry at the Observatory in Nice: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/402212 #planetSci

We're so excited to share the results of the ALMA large program ARKS that studied the distribution of dust and gas in a sample of 24 exoKuiper belts. With @lucaroundtheworld.bsky.social, Meredith Hughes and a large collaboration, we just published 10 papers presenting our first results arkslp.org

Can highly recommend submitting a proposal in response to this call by @issibern.ch! Successful proposals allow you to meet twice for one week in Bern with a small group of researchers of your choosing to discuss and work on your favorite science topic. I also encourage ECR to apply! #panetSci 🔭

#planetSci

After reviewing nearly 200 applications from prospective grad students and postdocs over the past few months for a couple different 🧪⚒️ postings, here are some tips, at least as they apply to North American positions. I hope they help future applicants. Share with your networks. 🧵