Author: Brian Gunter

Congratulations to Dr. Olga Didova, a (now former) PhD student at TU-Delft who defended her dissertation entitled “Separating Glacial Isostatic Adjustment and Ice-mass Change Signals in Antarctica using Satellite Data” on December 7, 2017.  Her work developed new methods for combining and analyzing various satellite remote sensing data (e.g., satellite gravimetry data from GRACE, surface topography data from ICESat, climate data from RACMO, GPS-derived surface deformations) to gain new insight into the mass changes over Antarctica (both from the solid earth and surface ice).  She is now a post-doctoral researcher at Bonn University.

Congratulations to Byron Davis, a GT-AE graduate student and the student project lead for the RANGE cubesat mission, who was recently awarded a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship.  These are nationally competitive, full-stipend fellowships that support the science objective of the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD).  Byron’s project is titled “Expanding the use of small-satellite constellations for remote sensing through improved orbit determination”.  This story was also recently posted on AE’s website.

Congratulations to Brian Weaver and Philippe Clifton for being awarded President’s Undergraduate Research Award (PURA).  Brian completed his PURA research this past summer, while Phil will start his in Fall 2017.  Both will be working on research tasks related to the TARGIT mission and the inflatable target system.  The PURA award provides up to $1500 in salary support for their efforts.

On April 13, 2017, the culmination of two semesters of work by the TARGIT team members resulted in a successful Concept Review for the mission.  Project managers from NASA Wallops were impressed with the progress made by the team, and provided excellent comments and feedback.  Congratulations to all involved!  The next mission milestone is the Preliminary Design Review, which we hope to complete by Fall 2017.

Dawn Andrews, structures lead for the TARGIT mission, was recently highlighted in an article on Forbes.com:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hilarybrueck/2017/03/11/spacexinterndawnandrews

Dawn was recently awarded a Brooke Owens Fellowship, which provides internships at some of the country’s top aerospace companies.  As part of this, she will be interning at SpaceX this summer.

Congratulations Dawn!

The Tethering And Ranging mission of the Georgia Institute of Technology (TARGIT), a project sponsored by NASA’s Undergraduate Student Instrument Program (USIP) was recently selected to be part of eighth class of CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) satellites.  This is an important milestone for TARGIT, because it guarantees that the mission will be launched on one of the coming launch opportunities.  More details can be found at the official NASA announcement:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-announces-eighth-class-of-candidates-for-launch-of-cubesat-space-missions

 

Congratulations to Zach Levine and Michael Herman, who recently completed their masters degree.

Congratulations to Bolys Sabitbek and Kevin Seywald, who recently finished their masters degree.

Featured on-air from WABE, professors David Spencer and Brian Gunter describe the cubesat missions Prox-1 and RANGE. The feature can be listened to at: http://news.wabe.org/post/georgia-tech-prepares-liftoff-tiny-satellites

NASA has selected a GT-AE proposal to develop and launch a 3U cubesat that will demonstrate a compact lidar imager for planetary applications.  GT-AE’s Prof. Gunter will serve as principal investigator, with Prof. Glenn Lightsey and GTRI’s Dr. Grady Tuell as co-investigators.  Additional collaboration will come from Dr. Britney Schmidt and Dr. James Wray of GT’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Science.  The target launch date is 2018.  See below for the formal NASA announcement!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-selects-proposals-for-student-flight-research-opportunities