Space
Scholars Topics For 2010
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Don’t see what you are looking for? More opportunities for summer research
projects can be found on the Scholars Programs Page.
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While Electronics Design Automation (EDA) is a multi-billion dollar industry, many algorithms are not designed for multi-processor execution. Ther is also the exciting possibility of accelerating algorithms using hardware-enabled systems (i.e. integrated field programmable gate arrays). In all cases, the objective is to provide creative concepts from ab initio to switch-level modeling to permit AFRL researchers to increase the throughput of science and engineering itself...
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The typical wiring harnesses for spacecraft are fixed, complex, and require up to 8 months to construct. For systems desiring a rapid development timeframe, an alternate approach is required. One approach involves creating a programmable wiring harness that, like a field programmable gate array (FPGA), is a pre-built fabric that is soft-configured at the time of use, theoretically within minutes of a defined need...
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The next generation of spaceborne computers will be multi-processor, high-data-rate, distributed processing solutions. The computing architectures will need to be ultra-reliable and survivable versions of today's terrestrial high-speed network architectures. Because a variety of space applications could use such high-speed architectures, flexible, scalable compute nodes are a necessity...
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Packaging refers to the set of physical structures that both protect and provide access to the functions of the components within the boundary of some assembly. As such, it is a necessary "evil" in electronics, as it represents a sort of physical "clutter" between components and their intended application...
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On-orbit performance of power generation systems is critical to the mission success. Coupled with the demands for increased power generation, it is important to develop and investigate advanced technologies capable of meeting these mission requirements. Advances in single crystal multi-junction, thin-film, and nano-technology based photovoltaics are important to achieving improved on-orbit performance...
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Various efforts under investigation include theoretical models of adversarial behavior, advanced methods of intent prediction and opponent modeling, design and development of adversarial planning techniques such as (a) Performance-based and Pareto Strategies for Stochastic Multi-Player Pursuit-Evasion that provide admissible and non-inferior strategies employed by adversarial teams of pursuers and evaders...
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Cryocoolers are required for many technical areas including the cooling of infrared sensors for surveillance and atmospheric studies and superconducting electronics and magnets. In this project the method of entropy generation minimization will be used for analysis and optimization of different components of the pulse tube and Stirling cryocoolers...
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Guidance and control algorithms for autonomous proximity operation and docking will be studied/developed using modeling and simulation techniques in Matlab, Simulink, and Satellite Tool Kit (STK). Real-time motion planning methods will be examined/developed based on (but not limited to) an original modification of Artificial Potential Function (APF) Guidance methods for both translational and attitude control...
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This topic seeks to apply current state-of-the-art approaches towards the generation and analysis of software for mission/flight-safety critical aspects of next-generation space missions. Techniques of interest include, but are not limited to, analytic approaches to abstraction/discretization of continuous-time dynamical systems, provably correct auto-code generation, and control-theoretic approaches to verification and validation of complex algorithms...
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To support rapid launch capability an autonomous flight safety system is desired. Currently launch vehicle abort functions are handled on the ground by a team of flight safety engineers. This work will focus on studying and designing the architecture and control system for an autonomous flight safety system that is trajectory independent and is capable of operating on a simple processor...
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Future satellite based data collection and distribution requirements will not be realizable with constellation control architectures that rely on ground based, scheduled, man-in-the-loop tasking. Future systems must respond to requests for service, allocate resources, and maintain acceptable user quality of service levels without human intervention or constant monitoring...
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The research will support the needs in the subject areas such onboard automation and performance robustness through the development of self-correcting techniques and novel control algorithms that will augment self-awareness and –correcting capabilities to systems in situations where human response time is insufficient and severe faults happen...
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For space systems, mass and performance are critical driving design parameters. To address both of these issues, symbiotic, or multi-functional, systems that integrate additional functionality into the satellite’s structural panel have been of great interest. Of specific interest has been the enhancement of the thermal properties of the structure through the use of biologically-inspired circulatory systems...
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The Air Force Research Laboratory is exploring the many ways in which reconfigurability can be exploited to make space systems better. In this project, applicants will work with AFRL experts to help develop a LEGO-like modular cell-based system, whose building blocks can be programmed to attach together, route electrical signals, and perform different functions with the end goal of making a satellite based on self-describing, self-assembling modules...
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This research will study potential find global solutions for gimbal rates for slewing trajectories with respect to Control Moment Gyro (CMG) attitude control as well as novel steering laws. Currently there are close to no attitude control algorithms which incorporate the steering logic within them. What is meant by this is that the majority of steering logics developed take in and map a known control torque to the corresponding gimbal rates...
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Currently, software-defined radios (SDR) and cognitive radio technologies, which allow the reconfiguration of radio parameters that have historically been “hard-wired” into communication devices, is being investigated by the research community for several applications, including approaches for real-time allocation or sharing of frequency spectrum...
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Accurate knowledge of the state of the solar corona and wind is critical for reliably predicting, days in advance, geomagnetic disturbance events. These events are produced by high speed streams emerging from coronal holes and Corona Mass Ejections (CMEs), which are large eruptions of solar plasma and field...
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The goal of this effort is to improve upon several aspects of the intricate process of space object tracking, orbit determination, and cataloging. The focus of this effort is not on the orbit determination (estimation/filtering) process, but rather on the mechanism of tracking, i.e. the way in which ground measurements are obtained...
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Cubesats are 10 x 10 x 10 cm satellites that offer a convenient package for a variety of systems and a standardized container for delivery into space. To maximize the use of such a small volume, it is desirable to deploy a telescope that has an aperture larger than 10 cm. The goal of this research is to develop approaches for packaging a primary mirror larger than 10 cm into a cubesat and then design, build, and test a prototype...
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Very deep submicron semiconductor processes (130 nm through 65 nm minimum feature size) provide the opportunity for developing extremely high performance microcircuits with low power consumption. However, applications of these technologies in space systems is problematic due to their vulnerability to space radiation effects associated with total ionizing dose accumulation and ionized particle strikes from protons and heavy ions...
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Of interest is the ability of space vehicles with propulsion systems to perform rendezvous operations with other objects in space for purposes of repair, refueling, or inspection. However, the majority of work done in this area has calculated rendezvous trajectories based on solving either minimum-time or minimum-delta-V optimization problems for a specific rendezvous between two specific objects...
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Currently the Air Force is the agency responsible for cataloging and tracking the large number of objects in the vicinity of the Earth, including both active and inactive satellites as well as large amounts of orbital debris. The problem involves multiple sensors separated by large distances and is dynamic in nature...
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The research address the technical challenges associated with Command and Control autonomy through the investigation of integrative models and decision support algorithms in the areas such as systems-of-systems and network and information for multiple problem domains. The primary interests include (a) Stochastic Control of Distributed Large-Scale Systems for practical situations with the following complexities: bandwidth constraints and reduction in data transmission, decentralized output feedback stabilization, and closed-loop performance robustness; (b) Comparison of Several Space Target Tracking Filters that examines a comparative analysis of several nonlinear filters such as Extended Kalman Filter, unscented KF, Particle Filter, and Linear Minimum Mean Square Error filter for the problem of cooperative satellite trajectory estimation...
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This topic provides a unique opportunity to participate in the development of leading edge EDA tools and mixed-signal space electronics. Electronic design automation tools are required for the generation of integrated circuits. Accurate modeling and simulation (M&S) at all levels of abstraction are necessary to adequately incorporate device, circuit, and semiconductor fabrication performance...
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The Responsive Space program involves the rapid design, assembly and launching of satellites for a variety of missions. Successful operation of these satellites requires effective guidance, navigation & control systems. The difficulty lies with the rushed nature of the program which doesn’t allow sufficient time to perform a complete pre-launch systems check...
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Consider a simple laser rangefinder. It uses the speed of light and time of flight of a light pulse to compute a range between two objects. When a filter processes these measurements, it creates an estimate based on current information. Mathematically, this isn’t correct. The existence of a non-zero time-of-flight means that the estimate should be based on information from two different times: the time that the signal is sent, and the time that the signal is received...
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Given sets of optical measurements of an Earth orbiting satellite it is possible to determine a region of potential orbits for that satellite. As more measurement sets become available the region of potential orbits decreases until the problem becomes one of statistical orbit determination. This proposed research includes the evaluation of admissible regions or orbital manifolds for sparse optical measurements of satellites in predefined orbital regimes...
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The student will evaluate advanced radiation hardened mixed-signal devices and integrated circuits for application to space systems. Components of interest include analog to digital and digital to analog converters, phase locked loops, frequency synthesizers, as well as high frequency amplifiers. Investigations will consider SiGe, SOI, and GaN or other high frequency technologies...
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This topic will explore the development of new synthesis approaches based on deliberate insertion of redundancy to increase the reliability of FPGA-based systems that must operate reliably in space under the presence of single event effects. The applicant should have a strong background in heuristic approaches...
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Nearly every modern spacecraft has a subsystem that requires some degree of deployable functionality, whether the subsystem be a reflector, an antenna, a solar array, a phased array, a radiator, a sun shade, a solar sail, or a solar concentrator. Of all the large payloads in use today, only two basic stiffening methods exist to support them, tension and flexure...
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Though dramatic enhancements in devices and design tools for field programmable gate arrays have emerged, designers often cannot achieve high-throughput in the design process. AFRL is interested in using automatic program generation methodologies to provide a more effective means of generating workable flight systems with much less human effort...
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Antenna reflectors have been successfully used on spacecraft for decades most notably in the form of tensioned mesh. Reflectors provide a means to focus RF energy for a wide range of purposes including communications, ground imaging, and moving target tracking. State-of-the-art mesh reflectors have a strong record of reliable operations...
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Defense space electronics require much more robust reliability than commercial, terrestrial electronics. It is well known that both current and future commercial silicon electronics will not meet defense needs without sacrificing performance. Furthermore, several effects, such as hot carrier injection and negative and positive bias temperature instability (NBTI, PBTI) have been recognized as crucial effects...
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Exploit genetic algorithms to accelerate Edisonian explorations in design space for creating better radiation-hardened devices and circuits. Developing electronics in space is complicated by the need to make devices, circuits, and systems resilient to total ionizing dose and radiations effects. Applicants will work with AFRL researchers to develop and apply genetic algorithms to the problems of creating improved devices (coupled to, for example, process simulation / device modeling), circuits (i...
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The relative motion between two or more satellites in close proximity can be modeled in unique ways. The governing equations for such motion can account for a variety of physical phenomena and, as such, maybe either linear or nonlinear, time-varying or time-invariant. Once a particular model has been developed, guidance algorithms (i...
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The student will work under the direction of an experienced researcher to study methods for taking full advantage of extreme high density, random interconnect schemes for memories and ultimately logic and E27processors. This work is in conjunction with experimental work in growing high density interconnects based on virus based electronics...
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Highly deformable mirrors are enabling devices for creating all-reflective zoom optics. However, it is difficult to actuate and maintain surface figure on highly deformable mirrors. The way the mirror is mounted and actuated can influence the surface figure. The goal of this research is to find a method to mount and actuate a highly deformable mirror that produces excellent figure and can be done without exceeding material limits...
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Recent research has shown that optical systems with built-in spherical aberration can be digitally corrected to provide quality images while loosening the fabrication tolerances. In order to enable deployable optical systems, some means is necessary to keep the tolerances loose to allow mechanisms in the deployable elements...
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The trend for electronics has been to increase capability while decreasing size. As a result, heat removal has become a significant challenge and is best demonstrated by Intel declaring that they have hit the "thermal wall" and re-vectored their development efforts toward multi-core architectures...
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The electronic design automation (EDA) approaches used in microcircuit design represent a near push-button toolflow (PBTF) approach to constructing complex electronics systems. The processes of schematic capture (describes circuit requirements), design synthesis (using standard libraries), switch-level simulation, automatic test pattern generation (ATPG), and place-and-route, etc...
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Fielding the internet protocol in space has been much discussed, but even today very few simple demonstrations have been attempted and, despite the beliefs to the contrary, limited standardization on how internet protocol (IP) would be implemented exists. Applicants will work with AFRL to examine existing approaches and formulate a test system in the ground responsive space testbed (RST) laboratory to examine how various combinations of higher level protocols (i...
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The AFRL MESSA program is an effort to characterize and ultimately understand intent of s/c using resolved optical and near IR imagery by thorough far-field ground observation and comparison to TASAT modeling. A major new capability has been place in operation to conduct these observations and one element of this program will be to characterize glint or near-glint imaging of typical s/c reflective surfaces at angles close to peak reflection...
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The AFRL MESSA program is an effort to characterize and ultimately understand intent of s/c using resolved optical and near IR imagery by thorough far-field ground observation and comparison to TASAT modeling. A major new capability has been place in operation to conduct these observations and one element of this program will be to characterize a limited number of shapes (cubic, cylindrical, etc...
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AFRL has an on-going research effort to optimize unresolved LWIR imagery by assess signal in multiple, narrow bandwidths and employing Kalman filtering techniques to assess maximum information regarding unresolved, or poorly resolved space objects. LWIR Laboratory development and initial analysis are complete...
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With advances in solar cell technology and the miniaturization of electronics, new high power nano- and small satellite concepts have insufficient radiator area. In addition, the power requirements of large satellite systems are expected to increase dramatically as flexible solar cells, deployable power sails, and alternative power technologies mature...
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The Air Force Research Laboratory is interested in harnessing microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for space applications. While there has been a lot of interest in developing MEMS for many applications (including space), there has been little practical fallout in terms of flyable MEMS devices. We seek to find better matches for MEMS in space, in applications ranging from micro-gyros and micro-thrusters to programmable thermal management structures and micro-hard drives...
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Applicants will work with AFRL to develop an ultra-compact, ultra-rugged transponder for a satellite capable of transmitting simple, stored information in a self-contained fashion. The system brassboards for the rugged "black box" can be built and tested in AFRL's responsive space testbed...
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While most of the world is looking for the fastest computer, we recognize that many of the hundreds of computers that people encounter in their daily lives are not those computers, but in fact simple embedded machines (even 4-bit or 8-bit processors). Since large processors and large software programs are extremely expensive (code development effort for example is non-linearly expensive with code size), it is interesting to examine the possibilities of fine-scale distribution of processing intelligence...
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This topic will involve analytic and numerical modeling of advanced satellite communications antenna systems with a goal of providing a parametric analysis tool for evaluating the impact of new technologies on air force satellite communications systems as well as to provide tools for the design of antennas based on the technology for specific missions of interest...
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Future space launch missions are likely to include a large number of small secondary payload spacecraft with limited deployment sequencing options. In order to support rapid launch with simultaneous deployment of large numbers of spacecraft, models need to be developed to understand the probability or satellites re-contacting each other...
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In space, the efficiency of circuitry is affected by engineering methods aimed at improved resilience to single event effects. These methods achieve robustness through overhead, compounding the effectiveness of radiation hardened circuits. It is well-known that threshold logic circuits can lead to more compact implementations of many Boolean circuits compared to traditional binary logic schemes, but little work has been done recently on developing any practical implementations of a reconfigurable logic system based on threshold logic...
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Applicants will research the molecular dynamics of nano-scale devices and phase-change materials for space applications. Applicants will apply time-dependent density functional theory and non-equilibrium Greene's Function Techniques to a broad range of nano-scale devices, including semiconductor nanowires and nanotubes...
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The student will characterize NBTI effects on advanced MOSFET devices using novel spectral measurements from harmonics generated from fundamental frequency and the non-linear characteristics of the FET to ultimately determine device parameters.
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With lithographic costs for fully custom ASIC's growing exponentially with reduced feature size, FPGA's are increasingly attractive for space systems, even with performance disparities, due to the ability to re-use them for multiple missions on the same aerospace platform. FPGA's are currently reconfigured using CMOS logic, requiring large power consumption that increases with decreased feature-size through increased leakage current...
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This project will involve analytic and/or experimental investigations into one or more areas dependent on the student’s background, experience, and abilities. Topics of interest include: the development, analysis, and experimental demonstration of optical data bus technologies for high data-rate intra-satellite communications; modeling, experimental characterization, and control of optical phased-array components for space-based communications terminal applications; pointing, acquisition, and tracking control of free-space laser communications apertures; and advanced modulation and coding approaches for space-based laser communications systems...
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Surveillance satellites use infrared (IR) sensors to detect and observe a range of targets. IR sensors require cryogenic cooling (temperatures below 120 K) in order to observe relatively cool targets. Pulse tube refrigerators are one type of compact “cryocoolers” used to cool space based IR sensors. Pulse tubes operate on a variation of the Stirling cycle where, instead of a mechanical displacer or expander, a gas column in the pulse tube acts as the displacer...
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An important aspect of spacecraft operations is identifying and understanding anomalies. This research looks to find novel methods for identifying attitude anomalies through passive monitoring of the attitude determination and control system (ADCS). Anomalies may include environmental affects or internal and structural problems...
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Surveillance satellites use infrared (IR) sensors to detect and observe a range of objects. IR sensors require cryogenic cooling (temperatures below 120 K) in order to observe relatively cool objects. Pulse tube refrigerators are one type of compact “cryocoolers” used to cool space based IR sensors. Conventional thermodynamic analyses of pulse tubes assume uniform compression and expansion; however, preliminary CFD studies indicate a non-uniform distribution of temperature and pressure in developed flow...
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While tremendous work has been done in very low-level simulations of electronics (e.g. SPICE, VHDL, etc.) and very high-level simulations of spacecraft orbits (e.g. satellite toolkit), very little work has been done to couple higher level electronics (at the multiple processor level) to the higher level tools...
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This topic is to investigate methods for building a 3-d model of an object based on a set of 2-d images. Reconstructed model quality will be assessed as a function of the object’s geometry, the number of images, pose diversity, and lighting. Algorithms will be developed and exercised in Matlab.
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Regardless of mission, size or orbit, satellites need large surfaces that can be unfolded from a satellite bus. Larger solar arrays collect more power. Larger antennas radiate more focused beams and sense more subtle detail. This need is especially pertinent to extremely resource constrained picosatellites, such as Cal Poly's CubeSat satellites...
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AFRL is spearheading the development of modular, fault-tolerant strategies for integrating thermal management systems into missiles and spacecraft. Normally, the design of the thermal management subsystem is a very custom, painful, expensive proposition. This amplifies system risk, increases non-recurring cost across a number of system developments, and can result in costly delays when redesign is necessary due to evolving requirements...
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In the future vision of responsive space, AFRL is hoping to develop spacecraft in days instead of years. But doing this will also require the development of a ground infrastructure to control the spacecraft. As such, we will be seeking the development of automatic control systems on the ground for monitoring, commanding, and operating the rapidly-designed spacecraft...
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In the AFRL vision of plug-and-play spacecraft, components with self-describing interfaces are rapidly combined to form complex spacecraft. Doing this, even in the laboratory, requires cultivation of a plug-and-play catalog. Applicants will work with AFRL in the responsive space testbed to develop simple plug-and-play components...
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This work is expected to lead to the definition of a universally recognizable vocabulary and semantic infrastructure for aerospace systems. The ontology will lead to the ability to create a plug-and-play (PnP) system, self-organized from intelligent components, each containing an electronic datasheet composed of atoms/words from the PnP ontology...
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AFRL is seeking to develop a means for building "smart-grid" power systems from 100W to 10kW (or more) in which the solar panels, batteries, and components (associated with aggregation, charge monitoring/management, and distribution) are rapidly design-able with "wizards" and can be easily assembled within minutes or hours...
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This topic is to investigate methods for estimating the position and orientation of an object captured in a single image and a sequence of images. Algorithms that use a model of the object and model-free methods are of interest. Finally, rigid body motion estimation techniques will be explored. Algorithms will be developed and exercised in Matlab...
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Space missions are increasingly using maneuverable spacecraft operating in close proximity with other spacecraft to accomplish their missions. AFRL is interested in developing navigation and guidance control algorithms and approaches to perform these missions. This project seeks to develop fuel aware control strategies for both spacecraft that are cooperating and for spacecraft operating around an inert space object...
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This topic represents a unique opportunity to expand the student's knowledge in the areas of design hardening, mixed-signal electronics, radiation characterization and advanced EDA tool development. The design of analog and mixed-signal (A/M-S) integrated circuits represents a challenging technology venue for DoD mission technology developers...
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The student will perform electrical characterization of novel chalcogenide devices with potential applications in radiation resistant non-volatile memories, analog electronics, and FPGA's. Devices will be exposed to radiation to test a programmed state's radiation resistance. The student will also build test circuits comprising these devices in order to explore their application in non-volatile memory, analog electronics and FPGA's...
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In order to facilitate rapid launch capabilities a means of reducing launch range tracking infrastructure is required. For current launches a large amount of ground support equipment is required to provide launch vehicle metric tracking. A means of reducing range requirements for rapid launch is for the launch vehicle to possess its own metric tracking capability...
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Rapid prototyping, simulation, and test of multiple spacecraft GN&C systems is necessary to meeting the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office's mission requirements of 7-day and 30-day Design, Assembly, Integration, and Test timelines. The fluid nature of ORS Office's cost, schedule, and mission needs will require rapid development of new GN&C system configurations to meet these changing needs...
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This topic is associated with the conceptual design of a ground based test bed for attitude control with the use of CMGs. This platform will need to be reconfigurable in the sense that it will be able to have reorientation of the CMG gimbal axes, and the ability to replace flight modules, sensors and flight code in a reasonable time...
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The Department of Defense, in part due to the acquisition reforms of the 1990s and in part due to superior investments by industry, largely abandoned research investments in understanding the reliability of emerging microelectronics processes. Even before these occurrences, the DoD’s approaches for predicting reliability had often been criticized as too simplistic, based on cookbook approaches instead of first-principles understanding of the physics of failure...
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The Air Force Research Laboratory is interested in developing reliable switches and relays based on mechanical structures that might be as small as a human hair. Despite a lot of prior research investment, the vision of a good, latching switch capable of being turned on and off under "live" conditions is still elusive...
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The student will explore the simulation of processes for rapid spacecraft design, assembly, testing, and integration based on the use of emerging and future responsive space technology. In this work, applicants will assist AFRL in developing time / motion studies, process models, and training programs that provide a warfighter perspective to the "look and feel" of responsive space technology...
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This effort will aim to provide several tools for streamlining the evaluation spacecraft slewing performance using user developed metrics. The student will explore new ways to take mission level parameters and constraints and perform analysis through modeling and simulation. Questions that would be addressed would include (but not be limited to) can a satellite with given slewing abilities and payload constraints meet mission requirements for pointing with respect to a user provided set off ground targets...
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This research on semiconductor nanowire devices is significantly different from nanoscale versions of sub-micron devices, because of their extremely low dimensionality (<10nm diameter) resulting in 1D conductors, which imply unique electrical, optical and thermodynamic properties, significantly different from those of bulk material of the same composition...
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Researchers within Simulation and Technology Assessment have, over the years, developed many algorithms for navigation and guidance of single and multi-satellite systems. Unfortunately, each researcher generally maintains their own simulation environment making it difficult to evaluate these algorithms against a consistent set of scenarios and conditions...
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The capabilities of small satellites (microsats, nanosats, Cubesats, et al.) have greatly increased in recent times, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. As such, the utility of these platforms for space applications is of great interest to the Space Situation Awareness (SSA) mission: the ability to locate and characterize these objects will grow in importance, and their utility as sensing platforms may fill valuable niches in the overall mission space...
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Current rf electronics subsystems for spacecraft are fixed and inflexible. Communication using differing protocols, even at the same wavelength, is not possible. With software-defined radio, it is possible to almost arbitrarily manipulate the down-converted rf waveforms and use algorithms to extract or prepare communications...
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NASA has developed a device named Space Cube which is a 5 inch cube that contains a flight computer, GPS, inertial measurement unit, and a communication link for use on launch vehicles. The Space Cube device is a candidate for use in an autonomous flight safety system. Sounding rocket flights present an opportunity to test the Space Cube in this role; however, sounding rockets present a unique challenge due to the large g loads present during flight...
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AFRL is developing a system for building spacecraft rapidly based on plug-and-play (PnP) components. Doing this requires unique software concepts to assist systems in automatic recognition of components and integrating them rapidly with applications. Applicants will work with AFRL to develop and evolve novel software schemes to permit rapid spacecraft development based on extending some recently developed open tools aimed at this objective...
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Accurate rotational pointing of spacecraft is of key significance to numerous missions. In an ideal world, perfect knowledge of states and dynamics makes this task simple. Unfortunately, satellites don’t function in an ideal world. Sensors contain noise, biases, misalignments and other sources of error...
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Space missions are increasingly using smaller, autonomously maneuverable spacecraft operating in formations. Many of the formation missions require extremely accurate satellite velocity and position knowledge. This project is focused on determining the sensor performance necessary to achieve the desired satellite position knowledge with little to no external aiding (ground stations or GPS solutions)...
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Currently, the design, integration, and testing of the thermal control system (TCS) requires years to complete and is a leading contributor to satellite development time. The design time for an average small satellite is one to three years. Because of the long design cycle time and the rapid evolution of technology, satellites are obsolete before they are even launched...
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Applicants will work with AFRL to develop system-level approaches for reconfigurable encryption / decryption engines with compression/decompression support.
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This topic is to investigate methods for determining host spacecraft orientation based on noisy star camera images. Methods will be assessed as a function of data quality, star catalog fidelity, camera attributes, and processing requirements. Algorithms will be developed and exercised in Matlab.
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Structural Health Monitoring has been a growing field for numerous industries focused on improving maintenance schedules and reducing system risk. Recent developments within AFRL have called for robust system that meet rapid assembly, integration and testing deadlines. SHM is seen as an enabler of this mission to assist in assembly validation and error localization...
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Applicants will explore modifications to standard bulk silicon substrates to reduce the effects of space radiation. Approaches may include extreme thinning of the substrate, a variety of silicon-on-insulator approaches, use of applied substrate voltage, and the use of special implants.
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This topic is to test existing and develop new methods to enhance raw imagery for space applications. Both single frame and multiple frame approaches are of interest as well as general noise reduction techniques. The goals of this topic include increasing resolution, contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio...
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Advanced control design methods for high performance space applications require high fidelity models. This topic is to apply existing system identification techniques and to develop new methods for identifying high fidelity models. The systems of interest are challenging to model: they have high bandwidth, are modally dense, exhibit nonlinearity, and have large dynamic ranges...
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Many system identification methods entail optimization of a dynamic model according to an error or correlation metric. Similarly, many control design methods entail optimization of a dynamic controller to achieve desired levels of performance and robustness. Systems are often not parameterized in a form suitable for optimization...
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Advanced deployable space structures have enabled products that we interact with daily: DirecTV, satellite phones and high resolution 3D terrain maps. These structures are also critical to DOD space missions such as night, cloud or vegetation obstructed imaging, moving object tracking and communications...
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AFRL is developing a super-router testbed to explore the conjunction of dynamic optical and rf communications traffic, similar to that expected in future communciations satellites. Applicants will work with AFRL to develop in-house testbed components, models, and demonstrations that show limitations and breakthroughs in packet-based high-performance embedded, mobile routing architectures...
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Satellites have various thermal control issues, which may include cryocoolers for cooling of infrared sensors for surveillance and characterization of resident space objects. Precise thermal control typically required of IR sensor payloads, which can be difficult to obtain in orbit. Current satellite thermal modeling software is capable of simulating these various changes, but improvements to thermal control methodologies are still needed to simplify the design of satellite thermal control systems...
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Electromagnetic Metamaterials have enjoyed a lot of press as of late. While this field of research is continuously demonstrating new and novel electromagnetic properties, very few efforts have focused on the potential implications for implementing these structures on operational systems. Of specific interest is how the EM behavior of these structures changes when subjected to mechanical and thermal loading typically found on space systems...
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It is clear that, based on an argument of wireability, three-dimensional systems offer a better potential match of the supply (availability of physical wiring resources) to the demand (the design-driven need for wires). Of course, nearly all large scale integration systems are based on two-dimensional circuit configurations...
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Space Situational Awareness technologies do not address near real time estimation and assessment of resident space object behavior. Moreover, few current methods address the associated uncertainty (or confidence) in the knowledge recovered from data. There is no institutional-level software tool able to provide a rigorous analysis of which data types and/or how much data is needed to contribute toward a meaningful understanding of objects orbiting Earth...
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