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Three aerospace students earn major Defense fellowships

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 15:33:36 +0000

Three aerospace students earn major Defense fellowships Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 09:33

Jeff Zehnder

Three �鶹��Ƶ aerospace PhD students have earned prestigious 2024 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships.

Vicki Hurd, Sarah Kinney, and Ryan Menges have each been awarded the Department of Defense honor, which provides three year fellowships to promising young scientists and engineers.

The program, established by Congress in 1989, provides fellowships to up to 500 people across the United States annually and is designed to promote education in science and engineering disciplines relevant to the Department of Defense.

Find out more about our honorees and their research below.

Vicki Hurd

3rd Year PhD Student

Advisor: Allie Hayman
Lab: Bioastronautics Lab

My research will develop venous gas emboli (VGE) detection algorithms and characterize the impact of signal degradation and motion artifacts on detector performance to establish the foundation for a wearable ultrasound extravehicular activity (EVA) VGE monitor. It is currently unknown how VGE form over time and relate to the onset of decompression sickness. Recent advances in ultrasound transducers could enable long-term, continuous monitoring, transforming our understanding of decompression sickness and providing a means to monitor astronaut VGE levels during EVA. This will be critical as future exploration missions emphasize increased EVA frequency, duration, and number of transitions between pressurized environments. I will develop and validate sound-based and image-based ultrasound VGE detection algorithms and generate novel performance metrics for each, establish algorithmic means of synthesizing decompression sickness data, characterize algorithm performance under degraded signal conditions, and assess how motion artifacts influence VGE detection abilities. Autonomous detection of VGE levels in the circulatory system via wearable ultrasound would prove monumental in the foundational understanding of decompression sickness and would serve as a direct strategy to predict and mitigate decompression sickness during surface EVA.

Hurd is a 2024 awardee of both the NDSEG and a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) fellowowship. Program rules allow honorees to receive only one. She has chosen the NSTGRO.

Sarah Kinney

1st Year PhD Student

Advisors: Iain Boyd and John Evans
Labs: Nonequilibrium Gas and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (NGPDL) and Computational Mechanics and Geometry Laboratory (CMGLab)

Aerodynamic heating is a critical design challenge for hypersonic vehicles due to the complex relationships between material ablation and chemical kinetics, which significantly impacts fluid dynamics. These complex relationships make modeling and predicting aerodynamic heating and flow separation in hypersonic conditions particularly difficult. Reproducing these conditions in wind tunnels is often impractical or prohibitively expensive, and flight tests are even more costly. As a result, hypersonic vehicle testing is often limited to wind tunnel experiments with limited fidelity and scope. My research aims to develop a reduced-order model that accounts for tunnel facility noise and other fluid-structure interactions in hypersonic environments. The goal of this model is to integrate data from lower fidelity hypersonic tests, providing a more cost-effective approach to correlating these results with those from higher fidelity tests. Ultimately, this work seeks to enhance the accuracy and affordability of hypersonic vehicle testing and development. Photo Credit: Leighton Jack

Ryan Menges

1st Year PhD Student

Advisor: Daniel Scheeres
Lab: Celestial Spaceflight Mechanics Lab (CSML)

Ryan Menges is a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Daniel Scheeres in the Celestial Spaceflight Mechanics Lab (CSML). His research lies at the intersection of dynamical systems theory and spacecraft navigation. In his current work, he is developing semi-analytical methods for spacecraft state propagation and navigation in cislunar space utilizing high-fidelity dynamical models. Ryan is particularly interested in enabling advanced spacecraft autonomy.

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Five PhD students earn 2024 NASA fellowships

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:56:03 +0000

Five PhD students earn 2024 NASA fellowships Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 08:56

Jeff Zehnder

Five PhD students in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences are being recognized with 2024 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) fellowships.

The annual program sponsors graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our nation’s science, exploration and economic future.

Program recipients perform space technology research at their university campuses and at NASA Centers.

NSTGRO honorees receive research funding and are matched with a technically relevant NASA subject matter expert, who serves as a research collaborator.

Smead Aerospace students have had strong representation in this program, with 25 winners over the past five years.

Read below for more information about each 2024 honoree and their research.

Kristen Ahner

2nd Year PhD Student

Advisors: Daniel Scheeres and Jay McMahon
Labs: Celestial Spaceflight Mechanics Lab (CSML) and the Orbital Research Cluster for Celestial Applications (ORCCA) Laboratory

My research focuses on high-fidelity uncertainty propagation techniques and their incorporation into robust spacecraft guidance to enable autonomous mission execution for space exploration. As complex dynamics cause errors to grow over time and drive a spacecraft to deviate from its orbit and planned maneuvers, corrective guidance algorithms must adaptively re-optimize the spacecraft thrust maneuvers to reach target states and achieve mission goals, such as precise science observations or strict orbit accuracy. I aim to advance the state of the art by combining stochastic control approaches to uncertainty with nonlinear chance constraints in the cislunar region and planetary exploration environments.

Vicki Hurd

3rd Year PhD Student

Advisor: Allie Hayman
Lab: Bioastronautics Lab

This research will develop venous gas emboli (VGE) detection algorithms and characterize the impact of signal degradation and motion artifacts on detector performance to establish the foundation for a wearable ultrasound extravehicular activity (EVA) VGE monitor. It is currently unknown how VGE form over time and relate to the onset of decompression sickness. Recent advances in ultrasound transducers could enable long-term, continuous monitoring, transforming our understanding of decompression sickness and providing a means to monitor astronaut VGE levels during EVA. This will be critical as future exploration missions emphasize increased EVA frequency, duration, and number of transitions between pressurized environments. I will develop and validate sound-based and image-based ultrasound VGE detection algorithms and generate novel performance metrics for each, establish algorithmic means of synthesizing decompression sickness data, characterize algorithm performance under degraded signal conditions, and assess how motion artifacts influence VGE detection abilities. Autonomous detection of VGE levels in the circulatory system via wearable ultrasound would prove monumental in the foundational understanding of decompression sickness and would serve as a direct strategy to predict and mitigate decompression sickness during surface EVA.

Hurd is a 2024 awardee of both the NSTGRO and the Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Program rules allow honorees to receive only one. She has chosen the NSTGRO.

Max Joyner

2nd Year PhD Student

Advisor: Natasha Bosanac
Lab: Bosanac Group

While orbital rendezvous between spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) has become routine, the sensitive and chaotic gravitational dynamics of multi-body environments present additional challenges that need to be addressed for more ambitious exploration missions such as NASA's Artemis program. My research aims to help bridge this gap through developing a new approach for rapidly designing safe spacecraft trajectories for far-range approach and then close-range rendezvous in a multi-body system using motion primitives. This process will involve constructing two libraries of motion primitives for each domain, assessing them using a safety metric adapted from heritage LEO indices, building a hybrid motion primitive graph to construct initial guesses, and refining these guesses through a corrections problem to produce safe and efficient rendezvous trajectories.

Joyner is a 2024 awardee of both the NSTGRO and the Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Program rules allow honorees to receive only one. He has chosen the NSTGRO.

Andrew Morell

3rd Year PhD Student

Advisor: Hanspeter Schaub
Lab: Autonomous Vehicle Systems (AVS) Laboratory

Andrew’s research aims to (quite literally) close the gap between what we know about spacecraft dynamics before and after their docking, focusing on spacecraft contact dynamics for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM). Andrew is studying the use of impulse-based dynamics to create a generalized contact dynamics model for spacecraft using the Basilisk Simulation Framework. Currently, grappling in space relies on overengineered hardware to succeed in physically capturing another vehicle, but a full understanding of the contact dynamics can enable future sample return, on-orbit refueling, assembly of large space structures, and more by enabling advanced guidance algorithms for docking.

Tomaz Remec

3rd Year PhD Student

Advisor: Hisham Ali
Lab: Magnetoaerodynamics and Aerospace Plasmas Laboratory

The objective of Tomaz’s research is to provide foundational experimental data on the behavior of high-speed plasma flows such as those generated during planetary entry in the presence of applied magnetic fields and the characterization of resultant forces with the goal of advancing low TRL technologies to enable more capable, cost-effective planetary exploration missions. The extreme aerothermal environment experienced during hypersonic flight creates the conditions for significant dissociation and ionization of atmospheric gases. These ions and free electrons then constitute a conductive fluid which, when in the presence of a magnetic field, will admit a current and produce an associated magnetic field due to the Lorentz force. Leveraging of these magnetohydrodynamic interactions by novel technologies could expand capabilities of current thermal protection schemes, however, reliable experimental data on said interactions in planetary entry relevant plasma flows is extremely limited. This research will provide high quality, well-validated results utilizing several new inductively coupled plasma tunnel facilities in the Magnetoaerodynamics and Aerospace Plasmas Laboratory, and the results will enhance our understanding of magnetohydrodynamic interactions in hypersonic plasma flows and will directly contribute to the development of innovative technologies that will augment the performance capabilities of scientific missions to other worlds.

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Axelrad awarded 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Axelrad awarded 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/11/2024 - 00:00

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) have announced that Penina Axelrad, distinguished professor at the �鶹��Ƶ, has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering.

Dr. Axelrad will present her lecture, “The Evolution and Impact of Global Navigation Satellite Systems,” on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 11 a.m. ET, in conjunction with the NAE Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Registration for this lecture is free and open to the public.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide the basis for smartphones to effectively guide us to our destinations, safe and flexible navigation for tens of thousands of airline flights per day, seamless synchronization of power grids, and precise timing of financial transactions. GNSS also enable scientific observation of Earth’s variable gravity field, soil water content and vegetation, and even Earth’s atmosphere and ocean surface winds.

Dr. Axelrad’s lecture will discuss what we can learn from the remarkable evolution of a military navigation system into a global utility, and will explore where today’s advances in the utilization of signals-of-opportunity, optical communications, atomic clocks, and quantum sensing might lead.

Read full article at AIAA...

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CU Boulder rocket team picks up high honors at NASA launch competition

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 14:32:41 +0000

CU Boulder rocket team picks up high honors at NASA launch competition Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/08/2024 - 08:32

Jeff Zehnder

The rocket at liftoff.

3-2-1, liftoff! �鶹��Ƶ students have earned multiple awards in a NASA rocket competition.

The CU in Space club took part in the 2024 NASA University Student Launch Challenge, pushing their abilities to the limit as they successfully designed and built an 8-foot-tall, 42-pound rocket that deployed a quadcopter drone payload mid-flight.

“We had a really passionate group but this was an intense trial by fire,” said Adrian Northcutt, a rising aerospace senior and one of the team leaders. “The competition was announced in August, we had to finish by April. There was no slip. The train was moving, and it was not going to slow down.”

In addition to building a successful rocket, the team also had to meet multiple safety, documentation, and preliminary test cut offs along the way. The documentation requirements are familiar to working engineers – including a preliminary design review and critical design review – but these were first-time efforts for the team of undergraduates.

“We trauma bonded with each other over the documents,” said Leya Shaw, a rising aerospace junior and fellow team lead. “NASA takes those documents very seriously. You can get cut if they don’t like your work, but our mentor really pushed us and said it would be great preparation for going into the workforce. You have to go into a lot of detail about your design and convince NASA that this will be safe to launch come April .”

Northcutt and Shaw first connected over a year ago through the CU Boulder American Indian Science and Engineering Society, which competed in the 2023 NASA First Nations Launch rocket competition. The team swept the event, earning first place in all categories.

They were drawn to NASA University Student Launch as a new challenge, particularly when it came to the rocket payload. The design requirements called for a rocket that could hit 4,000 feet in elevation and safely jettison a payload weighing over 5 pounds to land on the ground within human survivability metrics without using a parachute or streamer.

The students decided their best chance was a quadcopter, but with the rocket body diameter only 6 inches, an off-the-shelf drone would never fit inside in one piece.

“We knew we had to somehow fold it up to fit into the rocket and came up with a design with four propeller arms, four landing legs, and a motor that would make them all fold out after they were ejected from the rocket,” Northcutt said.

The team spent eight months designing, building, and refining their rocket and payload, making extensive use of the machine shops in the Aerospace building.

They also conducted multiple required test launches of the rocket itself. Launching a rocket above 400 feet in altitude typically requires pre-approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. There are only a handful of qualified sites in Colorado, but repeatedly uncooperative weather stymied four different launch attempts.

However, the deadlines could not be moved.

Renderings of the collapsible drone.

“We had these flight demonstrations due by specific dates and then the weekends we planned for in Colorado would get canceled because of snow. So, we drove to Arizona. We drove to Kansas. We needed to launch or else,” Northcutt said.

After making it through all of the rounds of review, it came down to a final launch on a very hot spring day at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Of 50 teams that originally signed up to compete, only 11 made it all the way to the final cut and received approval to launch and deploy their payload.

“There were two teams that launched before us and their payload deployments weren’t successful. It was really scary, but really fun to see everything of ours deploy and we rode that high the rest of the day,” Shaw said.

The judges were impressed as well.

The team emerged with three different awards: the Rookie Award, the AIAA Reusable Launch Vehicle Innovative Payload Award, and the Social Media Award, for their active and creative social media presence throughout the project year.

“We were willing to do whatever it took to get to this competition,” Shaw said. “It was hard, but it was very nice.”

3-2-1, liftoff! �鶹��Ƶ students have earned multiple awards in a NASA rocket competition.

The CU in Space club took part in the 2024 NASA University Student Launch Challenge, pushing their abilities to the limit as they successfully designed and

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Students earn third in NASA lunar competition

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 21:53:21 +0000

Students earn third in NASA lunar competition Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/02/2024 - 15:53

Smead Aerospace students earned third place in the 2024 NASA Human Lander Challenge.

PhD students Ella Schauss (Advisor: Allison Hayman) and Amrita Singh (Advisor: James Nabity) represented the �鶹��Ƶ in the inaugural NASA event, which called for student teams to design solutions to manage Moon dust kicked up by lunar landings.

The pair were announced as one of 12 university team finalists earlier this year, advancing them to the final leg of the challenge in Huntsville, Alabama in June.

Dust mitigation during landing is one of the key challenges NASA will have to address in exploring the lunar South Pole region and establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon.

Participants in the competition developed proposed systems-level solutions that could be potentially implemented within the next 3-5 years to manage or prevent clouds of dust – called lunar plume surface interaction – that form as a spacecraft touches down on the Moon.

Schauss and Singh's proposal was titled “Lunar Surface Assessment Tool (LSAT): A Simulation of Lunar Dust Dynamics for Risk Analysis.”

Student and faculty advisor attendees at the competition had the opportunity to network and interact with NASA and industry subject matter experts who are actively working on NASA’s Human Landing System capabilities, giving participants a unique insight to careers and operations that further the agency’s mission of human space exploration.

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Atmospheric research in the most extreme place on Earth: Antarctica

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:10:10 +0000

Atmospheric research in the most extreme place on Earth: Antarctica Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 09:10

Jeff Zehnder

Above: Doddi aboard the Shirase amid the Antarctic icepack.
Header Video: Adelie penguins traveling across the frozen tundra.

Abhi Doddi (PhDAeroEngr’21) is collecting scientific data outdoors in a 70 mph whiteout blizzard. It is just another day of life in Antarctica.

Doddi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the �鶹��Ƶ, is leading a major study involving high-altitude balloons to improve weather forecasting on the Antarctic continent.

He endured years of planning and an ocean voyage aboard an icebreaker ship to reach this remote and dangerous corner of the Earth, and despite the weather, he is excited to be here.

“This sort of data has never been collected before,” Doddi said. “We want to gather small-scale turbulence data over the polar vortex using complimentary observations from radar and balloon-based instruments. This data is very important to improve the representation of turbulence due to the atmospheric gravity waves and the polar jet stream in the current numerical weather prediction models.”

Ship Journey

Most U.S.-based researchers who study the Antarctic weather do so from McMurdo Station, a United States-run base that is surprisingly accessible, with daily flights aboard military cargo planes during the Antarctic summer.

Doddi’s research required a much more arduous journey. He needed access to a specialized mesosphere–stratosphere–troposphere (MST) radar, and there is just one on the continent – at Syowa Station, a Japanese base only accessible by ship. Japan’s naval icebreaker Shirase makes one trip there each year. Doddi boarded in Australia. From there, it took 20 days to reach Syowa and 38 to return.

“I don’t get seasick, but it gets uncomfortable when swells are 7-8 meters tall, and you’re being tossed in all directions, even while you sleep,” Doddi said.

Breaking the Ice

The ship could travel at 30 knots on the open ocean, but when they reached the Antarctic ice pack, travel slowed considerably as the vessel needed to repeatedly back up and accelerate forward to break through the ice.

The Shirase carried roughly 180 crew plus 100 scientists and engineers. Doddi and his research partner, Tyler Mixa (MAeroEngr’14, PhD’19), were the first non-Japanese researchers to visit Syowa station.

Timelapse video of the Shirase reversing and accelerating forward to break through the Antarctic icepack.

“The language barrier was the hardest thing. Of the entire crew, there were only about 10 people who spoke conversational English,” Doddi said.

With no option for quick departure in the event of a medical emergency, every person on the trip needed to be in perfect health.

“They want you to be bulletproof. If you get a cavity before the trip, until your dentist provides proof that it’s been filled, and your doctor has signed off on your health, and the Japanese medical team has reviewed the records, you’re not getting on the ship,” he said.

Research Variety

Doddi’s work focused on Antarctic atmospheric conditions, but there were a litany of other teams conducting studies across scientific disciplines. There were multiple oceanographers and aquatic life experts, as well as people doing bird studies, ice core samples, and geological surveys.

“One of the teams discovered 3-4 new species of microorganisms on the trip, which was fascinating. No one had ever laid eyes on those organisms before,” he said.

Even after reaching Antarctica, there was more travel – by air. Due to shallow water, the Shirase must anchor 10 miles off shore and ferry the crew and supplies to the base via helicopter.

Blizzard Balloon Launches

Once they landed at Syowa, Doddi’s research got underway in earnest – readying dozens of balloon payloads that would fly to 20 km in altitude while drifting up to 100 km laterally and relay turbulence measurements back in real time.

The work paired broad measurements from the MST radar with precision instruments aboard the balloon-borne instrument systems developed at CU Boulder. As a major goal is improving weather forecasting, Doddi spent plenty of time outdoors in less-than-ideal weather.

“We experienced three different blizzards, each lasting up to three days, with winds in excess of 60-70 mph,” he said. “Those conditions were hands down some of the best experiences of my life. That’s the data we want, even if it meant we were staying up for 48 hours. My sleep cycle was totally messed up,” he said.

It did not help that during the Antarctic summer, the sun never sets.

When it was not snowing, the temperature typically hovered just below freezing – practically balmy for an Antarctic summer – with the warmest days topping out at 5°C (41°F).

Abhi Doddi and Tyler Mixa launching a balloon payload on a very windy day at Syowa Station

Syowa Station, which is spread across 60 buildings, offered few comforts during down time.

“The bunks on the ship were larger and more comfortable than those on the base. It was four people to a room, with no doors on any room, just curtains, and communal baths, like a gym locker room,” Doddi said.

What's a Vegetarian?

He also faced a unique obstacle with food. Doddi is a life-long vegetarian, but base meals were via a single Navy cafeteria cooking everyone the same food.

“I’m a vegetarian from birth, and the concept of vegetarianism doesn’t exist in Japanese culture. They don’t even have a word for it. So I brought 240 shelf-stable meals as part of my personal supplies,” he said.

Although Antarctica is frozen year round, there is still plenty of local wildlife. Doddi saw hundreds of emperor penguins and over 1,000 adelie penguins, in addition to seals, petrel seabirds, and albatross. He was able to do some hiking, but safety precautions were necessary.

“If you were going beyond the perimeter of the base or to access a restricted portion, one of the Navy personnel had to go ahead of you to assess the conditions of the ice for cracks and crevasses,” he said.

Analysis Back Home

With the Antarctic field campaign complete and Doddi back in Colorado, phase two of the project begins – complex and lengthy analysis.

“This was a two-month data collection project followed by a three-year modeling program,” Doddi said. “We need massive super computers to do this modeling. The overarching goal is to provide guidance to improve the weather forecasts for people in Antarctica, so this will help researchers for years to come.”

In addition to Doddi, collaborators on the project are Dale Lawrence, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder and director of the Research & Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles; Mixa from Global Atmospheric Technologies and Sciences (GATS) in Boulder; the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo; and Kyoto University.

Map of the Shirase's 20 day journey from Australia, to Syowa Station.
On the 38 day trip back, the ship hugged the Antarctic coast for additional research and to stop at an automated ionospheric measuring station that needed service.

Abhi Doddi (PhDAeroEngr’21) is collecting scientific data outdoors in a 70 mph whiteout blizzard. It is just another day of life in Antarctica. Doddi, a postdoctoral researcher at the �鶹��Ƶ, is leading a major study involving high-altitude balloons to improve weather forecasting on the Antarctic continent.

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Two PhD students earn 2024 Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowships

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:49:45 +0000

Two PhD students earn 2024 Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowships Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/10/2024 - 09:49

Congratulation to two Smead Aerospace PhD students for earning 2024 Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowships! The program recognizes up to 30 women annually pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences.

Andrea Lopez (Advisor: Hanspeter Schaub)
Erin Richardson (Advisor: Allie Hayman)

The program is open to students worldwide. Honorees receive a certificate, wings pin, and $10,000.

Zonta International is a global organization of professionals empowering women through service and advocacy.

The Fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of famed pilot and Zonta member, Amelia Earhart. It seeks to expand the number of women in the aerospace industry to reach gender equity.

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CU Boulder aerospace students earn prestigious Draper Fellowships

Anonymous — Tue, 28 May 2024 15:04:17 +0000

CU Boulder aerospace students earn prestigious Draper Fellowships Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/28/2024 - 09:04

Jeff Zehnder

Four �鶹��Ƶ aerospace graduate students have been named 2024 Draper Scholars.

The Scholars program provides recipients with the opportunity to work at Draper’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, conducting research and contributing to programs in national security, space systems, biotechnology and strategic systems.

The four recipients from Smead Aerospace are Sarah Leary, Jiho Lee, Ryan Menges, and Madison Ritsch.

Scholars in the program are paired with a member of the Draper's technical staff and a university faculty advisor while they conduct research in fields of mutual interest.

Find out more about the Smead Aerospace winners below:

Sarah Leary

Advisor: Katya Arquilla

I'm originally from Plymouth, Massachusetts. My PhD research is focused on developing an anthropometrically-accommodating wearable sensor system for behavioral health monitoring in-the-wild. I got involved in research similar to this when I was a sophomore here at CU Boulder. I started doing research in Allie Anderson’s lab and my PhD advisor is now Katya Arquilla. One of my favorite things about this project is I truly believe it will benefit life on Earth - not just astronauts. That’s something that is extremely important to me. I’m also planning to perform a lot of field testing with this device, so it will be a great excuse for me to work outside and not be stuck at a desk my entire PhD!

Jiho Lee

Advisor: Nisar Ahmed

I was born in College Station, Texas and raised in Daejeon, South Korea. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science and Mathematics (minor). My MS research focuses on advancing autonomous systems using machine learning techniques that enable them to operate efficiently in novel and uncertain situations. As a Draper Scholar, I will explore various machine learning methods for hybrid probabilistic tracking and forecasting. I am very excited about the opportunity to integrate the knowledge from my undergraduate studies and contribute to strengthening our nation's defense systems through this research.

Ryan Menges

Advisor: Daniel Scheeres

I am from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and I graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. My research lies at the intersection of dynamical systems theory and spacecraft navigation. In my current work, I am developing semi-analytical methods for spacecraft state propagation and navigation in cislunar space utilizing high-fidelity dynamical models with applications to spacecraft-to-spacecraft tracking and relative navigation. I am particularly interested in enabling advanced spacecraft autonomy.

Madison Ritsch

Advisor: Eric Frew

I was born in Vail, CO and grew up in the valley. I completed my BS in Aerospace Engineering Sciences and minor in Computer Science from CU Boulder in May 2023. My PhD research is focused on distributed autonomous robotic information gathering where I will be developing quality of information service metrics and local decision-making communication algorithms for teams of uncrewed aerial vehicles. I have been interested in UAS research since joining the IRISS lab as sophomore. However, one of the biggest challenges involved in in-situ sensing is team collaboration in GPS and communication-denied environments. I am so honored and excited to be contributing to such novel and life-saving research!

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Tracking Earth ice sheet melt from space

Anonymous — Mon, 20 May 2024 15:02:03 +0000

Tracking Earth ice sheet melt from space Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/20/2024 - 09:02

Jeff Zehnder

CU Boulder professor secures $800,000 NASA Grant

Khosro Ghobadi-Far is advancing the science of climate change with orbiting satellites.

Ghobadi-Far has earned an $800,000 grant from NASA to analyze data from the GRACE-FO satellites, which measure variations in Earth’s gravitational field. Although gravity may appear constant to humans, it actually fluctuates across Earth’s surface in ways that can be valuable to climate science.

“The variations are due to mass movement,” Ghobadi-Far said. “Because of climate change and global warming, the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic ice sheet are losing huge amount of mass, and when that mass changes, it changes the gravity field of Earth.”

Ghobadi-Far is an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and a fellow of Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the �鶹��Ƶ. His research focuses on geodesy, the science of accurately measuring Earth’s shape, gravity field, and its orientation in space as well as their variation with time.

In the early 2000s, NASA launched the GRACE satellites to observe changes in Earth’s gravity field by monitoring fluctuations in the satellites’ orbits using a microwave-based sensor. Ghobadi-Far used that data during his PhD thesis work to measure ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica, but the technology was only able to observe changes at least 300 km (186 miles) in size.

In 2018, two replacement satellites, GRACE-FO, entered service with much higher precision laser sensors. Ghobadi-Far is hopeful they can double the spatial resolution to more precisely measure ice sheet mass loss.

“It is much higher resolution data. It’s very important that we understand where it is on these ice sheets that we have the largest mass loss. Why is it that this part of the ice sheet is behaving differently than another area?” he said.

Changes in terrestrial water storage from GRACE observations from April 2002 to March 2016. Source: Emerging trends in global freshwater availability, published in Nature, May 16, 2018.

Collecting data from satellites allows researchers to track changes across the entire globe as opposed to instruments on Earth’s surface that can only monitor specific locations.

“Earth is a very dynamic planet, and we’ll be developing novel processing strategies to extract and exploit this laser data as much as we can to better understand how the planet is changing,” he said.

The gravitational field variations are not only caused by ice sheet melt. Any large shifts in mass can be tracked, including significant groundwater pumping for agriculture and cities, movement of tsunamis, and sea level rise.

“It’s really fascinating. By tracking this data over years, you can gather a lot of information,” he said.

Ghobadi-Far’s interest in this type of data has been growing since early in his college education. As an undergraduate, he was drawn to mathematical theories as a way to help answer complex human questions.

“I originally became interested in geodesy because of my passion for math and geometry, but I grew more and more interested in applications of space geodesy,” Ghobadi-Far said. “The social impact of the work drew me to this. Geodesy allows us to use math to learn more about Earth and understand how climate change is impacting our planet.”

CU Boulder professor secures $800,000 NASA Grant. Khosro Ghobadi-Far is advancing the science of climate change with orbiting satellites...

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CU Boulder students launch hybrid rocket

Anonymous — Tue, 14 May 2024 15:14:57 +0000

CU Boulder students launch hybrid rocket Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/14/2024 - 09:14

The team at the Pawnee National Grasslands launch site.

Blastoff! The rocket soared over the prairie, its unique engine screaming in unison with cheers from more than two dozen students. The months of work, late nights, calculations, and validations had all been worth it.

Three �鶹��Ƶ aerospace senior design teams had come together and successfully designed, built, and launched a 10’ tall, 50 lb. hybrid liquid/solid fuel rocket at Pawnee National Grasslands in rural Weld County.

“This was a really hard design challenge, a very difficult technical dance,” said Matt Rhode, teaching assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the lead faculty advisor on the project. “A hybrid motor is very difficult technically, requiring analysis in structures, fluids, propulsion, aerodynamics, remote sensing and control. This is a true triumph.”

All CU Boulder aerospace seniors spend two semesters tackling a capstone project that brings together their education with real-world engineering challenges. There are myriad project options for students, from space mission prototypes to reconnaissance drone concepts.

The 36 students of the rocket teams signed up for a project that had bedeviled years of previous seniors.

“I liked the challenge,” said senior Matt Bechtel, who served on the ground system team. “It was something completely different than any other project and had a practical endpoint. We would be able to test it in the exact environment it was designed for, which had a bigger appeal to me than any other project.”

The project saw its genesis more than 20 years ago, when a student approached Rhode about hybrid rockets, which are safer than solid fuel propulsion and not subject to the same U.S. government export restrictions that the turbo pumps necessary for liquid rockets are.

The complexity of the project presented a unique challenge for senior design, and proved to be more than could be accomplished by a single team in just two semesters. This academic year, Rhode split the project into three separate parts: ground systems, airframe, and engine. With dedicated teams for each, they made it to the finish line.

“This project was bigger than any of us,” said senior Gavin Morales, who was project manager for the engine team. “We had highs and lows. Our lowest point was when our second static fire test had an actuation failure with the main valve and just burned out. But we came back, and everybody had the attitude that we’re going to do whatever it takes.”

The rocket mid-flight.

The students designed and built everything themselves. Even the rocket fuel and oxidizer was manufactured on campus.

“All the mixes went well. The solid propellant was aluminum powder with HTPB, which is a rubbery binder. It’s a non-standard fuel but has high thrust initially, and we were really concerned about getting off the pad, so it made sense,” Morales said.

Each team worked separately toward their portion of the project goals while interfacing regularly to stay aligned. As students like Morales tackled engine design, others were perfecting the embedded systems and dual-deploy parachute systems necessary for the ground station and airframe.

Hybrid solid/liquid rockets are unusual in industry, with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser and Virgin Galactic as the primary users in the United States. Team members, however, discovered commercial interest is high, as the project helped numerous students get post-graduation jobs.

“I’ve been hired by a defense contractor and during the interview process I got to give specific examples from this project that were relevant to their work,” Morales said. “Another team member got a job at SpaceX doing exactly what he did on this project and a member of the ground team posted on LinkedIn about the launch and someone else from SpaceX tagged their boss about hiring him.”

Watching the students progress over two semesters, Rhode was impressed with their commitment to the project.

“These were a bunch of good students,” Rhode said. “They were motivated and dedicated and spent a lot of extra hours and got it done. Students don’t build this kind of rocket because it’s so hard, but this department has outstanding faculty and a world-class program, and these students got the job done.”

Preparing for the final launch, team members spent 36 hours setting up the rocket and ground equipment. Although there were some final hiccups with a load cell and morning fog that took far longer to clear than hoped, when the final countdown came the rocket went up without a hitch.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so stressed and I don’t think I’ve ever had such instant relief,” Bechtel said.

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