Author: Brian Gunter

Prof. Brian Gunter was recently elected to be a member of the 2021 Class Associate Fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The grade of Associate Fellow recognizes individuals “who have accomplished or been in charge of important engineering or scientific work, or who have done original work of outstanding merit, or who have otherwise made outstanding contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics.”

https://www.aiaa.org/news/news/2020/09/28/aiaa-announces-class-of-2021-associate-fellows

http://www.ae.gatech.edu/news/2020/09/prof-brian-gunter-named-associate-aiaa-fellow

 

Congratulations to Mohamed Nassif and Alex (Kwonhee) Lee for passing their PhD qualifying exams this past September!  This allows both students to become formal PhD candidates.  Nassif is currently working on topics related to gravity science of icy moons, and Lee is working on the use of quantum metrology to future formation/constellation concepts.

Welcome to all the new graduate students joining the research group this fall semester!  They include: Bhavi Jagatia, Daniel Nguyen, Richard Macke, Kohei Kotani, Chimuka Cheepa, and Uttoreo Saha

On Thursday, March 26, at 4:18p EDT, the Orbital Calibration (OrCa) 12U cubesat launched as a rideshare on the AEHF-6 mission.  The launch vehicle was a ULA Atlas V, and was placed into a highly elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).  It was also the first launch under the new U.S. Space Force!  The mission will allow us to improve our modeling and prediction of resident space objects (i.e., debris, satellites, etc.) by having a well-characterized target on orbit.  The spacecraft was machined and assembled here at GT-AE, with various environmental testing and surface characterization done at GTRI.  The project is a partnership with GT-AE and GTRI.  More details can be found here, with a link to the launch video here.

 

 

 

Gen. John Raymond, the current chief of Space Operations for the United States Space Force, toured the SSDL as part of his recent visit to the Georgia Tech campus.  We were happy to show him the latest developments from all of our small satellite missions and other project.  See the link below for more details on his visit:

http://www.ae.gatech.edu/news/2020/02/ae-school-welcomes-chief-space-operations-us-space-force

 

TARGIT’s own Sanjana Tewathia was selected to be part of the Brooke Owens Fellowship Class of 2020! These are globally competitive, highly selective fellowships, with only 40 recipients this year (from over 566 applicants). Congratulations Sanjana!
http://www.brookeowensfellowship.org/our-team/#our-fellows

Congratulations to Josh Ingersoll and Logan Bewley for completing their masters degrees!

Josh’s was a 2019 recipient of the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, and conducted his special problem research on the topic of “A Technical Evaluation of Integrating Optical Inter-Satellite Links into Proliferated Polar LEO Constellations.”  He also had the honor of giving the Graduate Reflections Talk at the commencement ceremony:

https://ae.gatech.edu/news/2019/12/josh-ingersoll-msae-19-urges-his-fellow-grads-bridge-worlds-numbers-and-meaning

Logan Bewley was a long-time member of the TARGIT small satellite mission, and helped develop advanced tracking algorithms for the final stages of the mission, with a final report entitled “CubeSat Inter-satellite Tracking Using Remote Sensing and Trajectory Estimation.”  He will work at OneWeb following graduation.

Mohammed Nassif was a member of two teams who shared top honors for best poster award at the 3rd Annual Symposium on Space Innovation, held Nov 27 and 28 at Georgia Tech’s Marcus Nano Technology Building.  Nassif’s work focused on developing technologies and mission scenarios for a future Europa lander mission.  In addition, Sarah Demsky and Alex Bustos, took honorable mentions for their poster “Design and Manufacturing of a Semi-Autonomous CubeSat Inflation Tank”.  Congratulations!

https://ae.gatech.edu/news/2019/11/third-annual-symposium-space-innovations-comes-georgia-tech?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dailydigest&utm_campaign=nov19&utm_content=space

 

On Wednesday, 7/31, the SSDL was host to NASA Administrator James Bridenstine and Congressman Tom Graves.  They toured the SSDL facilities and spoke with faculty and students to hear about the latest projects and small satellite developments.  More details about their visit to SSDL and GT-AE can be found here.

Congratulations to Daniel Groesbeck, Emily (Erin) Simmons, Richard Hunter, and Jairus Elarbee for completing their master’s degree and attending the Master’s Graduation Ceremony on Friday 5/3/19 (together with 1400 other MS graduates from across GT!).

Daniel Groesbeck (Topic: Autonomous Control of Small Satellite Formations using Differential Drag)

Erin Simmons (Topic: Application of Self-Healing Materials to Leak Repair in Inflatable Structures)

Richard Hunter

Jairus Elarbee (Topic: Processing Strategy for GNSS-based Orbit Determination of Small Satellites)