Friday, Sept. 13
10:40 a.m. - Seminar in AERO 120
11:30 a.m. - Panel Discussion / Q&A in AERO 111

This seminar will recount the two-year proximity operations and remote sensing campaign at Bennu, including the dramatic sample collection event and the events leading to the landing of the sample capsule in Utah.

A panel discussion will follow, featuring members of the Navigation and Flight Operations Team from NASA Goddard, Lockheed Martin, and KinetX, who will each recount specific challenges faced during the mission and the innovations that were implemented to overcome them.

Featured Speakers:

Dr. Michael C Moreau (AeroEngr MS’97, PhD’01) has worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since 2001, and for over 10 years has served in leadership roles on the OSIRIS-REx Mission, as the manager of the Navigation Team during development, launch, and Bennu encounter, then as deputy project manager and leader of the sample return capsule recovery team. Mike’s Ph.D. research at ���������� focused on applications of the Global Positioning System in high Earth orbits, and contributed to the adoption of GPS on NASA missions such as GOES and Magnetosphere Multiscale. Before attending ����������, he earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Vermont.

Over three decades, Dr. Peter Antreasian (AeroEngr PhD’92) has made contributions to the navigation of NASA missions, Galileo, NEAR, Mars Odyssey, MER, Cassini-Huygens, GRAIL, and OSIRIS-REx. He began his career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1992, then joined KinetX 20 years later to lead the OSIRIS-REx navigation team. His expertise in orbit determination and navigation has been crucial in the success of these missions, including the first-ever landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid and the return of an asteroid sample to Earth. Peter earned his BS, MS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering, respectively, from Purdue, University of Texas and University of Colorado.

Dr. Jason Leonard (AeroEngr MS’12, PhD’15) received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder under the advisement of Dr. George Born. Currently, he is the Orbit Determination Group Supervisor at KinetX Aerospace and Deputy Navigation Team Chief for the NASA OSIRIS-REx and OSIRIS-APEX missions. He has been the Orbit Determination Team Lead for OSIRIS-REx since prior to Launch, during the duration of proximity operations and its successful acquisition of asteroid regolith, and through its return of the sample to Earth. For his contributions to the mission, Jason received the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal and the PI Award of Distinction.

Dr. Daniel Wibben is the Maneuver Design Group Supervisor for the Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics practice at KinetX Aerospace, Inc. Since joining the company, he has held the role of Maneuver and Trajectory lead for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. He has also been involved with the planning and operations of the LUCY, LunaH-Map, and DAVINCI missions. He received his B.S. in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona where his research was focused on nonlinear guidance techniques for asteroid proximity operations and planetary landing.

Coralie D. Adam (AeroEngr MS’17) is the Optical Navigation Group Supervisor at KinetX. She holds a B.S. in aerospace engineering and astronomy from the University of Illinois, and an M.S. in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder. During her 12 years at KinetX, Coralie has had lead roles on the navigation teams for NASA’s New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and OSIRIS-APEX missions. In addition to leading the OSIRIS-REx optical navigation subsystem from development through sample collection, she co-convened the scientific investigation of Bennu’s active particle ejection phenomena. Coralie is currently the deputy Navigation Team Chief on NASA’s Lucy mission, and a navigation lead and science co-investigator on the OSIRIS-APEX extended mission to asteroid Apophis.

Ryan Olds (AeroEngr BS’04, MS’09) has 19 years of experience in Guidance Navigation and Controls at Lockheed Martin Space supporting NASA Deep Space Exploration Missions.  Ryan started his career working on the Pointing Control System for the Spitzer Space Telescope.  He developed the reaction wheel control system for the twin-spacecraft GRAIL mission and supported test, integration, launch, and operations at the Moon.  Ryan began working on OSIRIS-Rex in 2013 by developing control systems as well as the Natural Feature Tracking system which provided autonomous navigation for OSIRIS-REx during the mission’s sample acquisition phase.  Ryan is currently a Guidance, Navigation and Controls manager and continues to support Deep Space Exploration missions such as OSIRIS-REx and DAVINCI.

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Zhiyu Zhang
Postdoctoral Fellow, Electrical Engineering, Harvard University
Wednesday, Feb. 26 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: Despite the advancements of autonomous systems from decades of engineering, there is always the need to make them even more efficient and reliable. Machine learning holds great potential to achieve this goal, as it can leverage computation and data on an unprecedented scale. An important challenge is thus synergizing these two separate areas, which requires fundamental algorithmic innovations due to the high stakes of interacting with the physical world.

In this talk, I will describe my unique approach to tackle this challenge, specifically from the perspective of adaptive online optimization. This is a major research topic within theoretical machine learning, but my talk will focus on its engineering implications tailored to autonomous systems. The central question is the following: given a “black box” machine learning module, how can we use principled insights from adaptive online learning to improve its efficiency and reliability?

My talk will answer this question in two concrete problems. First, based on [arxiv:2402.02720] (ICML’24) and [arxiv:2410.02561] (in submission), I will demonstrate how to sequentially build trustworthy confidence set predictions on top of an arbitrary point-predicting machine learning model, without explicit statistical assumptions on the nature. Next, based on [arXiv:2405.16642] (NeurIPS’24), I will show that in lifelong reinforcement learning, a theoretically-grounded regularizer can mitigate an intriguing collapse behavior called “loss of plasticity”. These results can be applied to various high-impact modalities of autonomous systems.

Bio: Zhiyu Zhang is currently a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering at Harvard University. He obtained his PhD in systems engineering from Boston University, and BEng in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University. His research centers around the theory and practice of adaptive online learning, which concerns optimal sequential decision making with Bayesian-type prior knowledge. On the application side, he is also excited about various aspects of robotics and automation, especially algorithmic approaches that efficiently utilize large-scale pretraining. He has been recognized by the BU systems engineering outstanding PhD dissertation award, as well as outstanding reviewer awards from NeurIPS, ICML and AISTATS. He also serves as an action editor for the journal TMLR. 

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Tae Kim
Consulting Engineer Systems, Northrop Grumman/Mission Systems 
Friday, Feb. 28 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) announcement (DARPA, 2023) envisions a thriving lunar economy that necessitates rapid scaling of lunar exploration and commerce activities within the next decade. This rapid scaling, facilitated by the deployment of modular lunar infrastructure subsystems, can bring about a paradigm shift in cislunar space exploration. Among these subsystems, power, position navigation timing (PNT), and communication systems are identified as critical infrastructures for early human and machine lunar surface exploration. 

This paper presents a pivotal NGC trade study for modular power, low to medium data rate, and low size, weight, and power (SWaP) mobile joint communications-PNT (Comms-PNT) and Lunar Search and Rescue (LunarSAR) subsystem options, and preliminary performance bounds. These early critical lunar terrestrial Power, Comms-PNT, and LunarSAR network subsystems and their key subcomponents are envisioned to begin covering the South Pole region. The terrestrial Comms-PNT modular subsystems are not just designed to be expandable but also to be adaptable, ensuring that they can evolve to meet the changing PNT and geo-referencing control segment assets per National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems services requirements document (LCRNS SRD) (NASA 2022a & 2022b) to support future LunaNet specification (NASA 2023) for cislunar spacecraft and installations.

Bio: Dr. Taehwan Kim has over 30 years of experience in Space PNT and Communications systems with NASA GSFC, MITRE Corporation, and Industry. He contributed to the GPS L5 waveform and spectrum engineering to coexist with L-band emitters to receive the MITRE president award and the RTCA certification of appreciation. His current R&D areas include high-Doppler LEO, hypersonic, Cislunar PNT-communication, SWARM autonomy, and fusion integrity. He received a Ph.D.EE from the University of Maryland and BS in mathematics from the Seoul National University.

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Nina Vaidya
Assistant Professor, Astronautics and Spacecraft Engineering, University of Southampton, UK
Monday, Feb. 24 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The current fundamental limits such as Shockley–Queisser, ergodic light-trapping limit, diffraction-limited imaging (Abbe diffraction limit), noise in detection, reciprocal optical systems (Lorentz reciprocity), positive homogeneous refractive indices, Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation, mass and specific power of space systems and more are being shattered with new concepts and advanced material design. A bridge between concepts to go beyond these limits and new fabrication techniques using extreme materials to realize them will be outlined; disruptively ushering concepts from being impossible or difficult towards their implementation in large-scale engineering applications. With demonstrations of experimental performance, work on graded-index immersion optics, 3D-printed aerospace optical devices, ultralightweight space reflectors and adaptive optics, metamaterials photonic arrays, novel 2D and bulk materials creating nanoscale thin-film space tested solar cells with integrated multifunctional stacks that are resilient in the harsh space environments will be presented. To conclude, Space-Based Solar Power demo’s space launch and the recent end of mission successes and lessons will be reported. 

These projects, that are tied together in the overarching aim for deeper understanding of light-matter interactions and utilizing space as our new laboratory, are charting the future of energy security and sustainability and the space era.

Bio: In Nov. 2021, Nina joined as an assistant professor in Astronautics and Spacecraft Engineering at the University of Southampton, UK, after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, USA. Nina undertook her undergraduate study in Electronic Engineering at the University of Cambridge, England, UK and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, CA, USA. Nina specializes in the area of optics, optoelectronics,  and material design, especially for space applications.

Nina’s innovations and work on graded index concentrators and 3D printing to create nanometer-smooth optical devices are being featured in over 100s of news articles around the world and her work at Caltech on the Space Based Solar Power project was featured in a BBC interview, created functional prototypes, and recently the demo sent successful results from space in 2024.

Nina is on advisory boards of startups and a guest editor at Springer Nature. Before her Ph.D., Nina worked as a strategy consultant for international engineering companies & original equipment manufacturers in Europe and Asia. Nina was a Stanford DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) scholarship recipient and champions for educational outreach via work with organizations like the IEEE, WIE (Women In Engineering), EWB (Engineers Without Borders), and the UN.

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Damennick Henry
Postdoctoral Scholar, Smead Aerospace
Friday, Feb. 21 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: A new chapter in space exploration has begun, driven by an ambitious goal to develop a sustainable robotic and human presence on the Moon. Within the next decade, national and international entities from the public and private sectors will embark on missions with important objectives ranging from the search for water on the Lunar surface to the demonstration of critical life support technologies in deep space. The pursuit of these goals ensures a future proliferation of vehicles operating in cislunar space, a region in which motion is heavily influenced by the gravitational pull of the Earth and Moon. Together, the Earth and Moon’s gravities create a chaotic dynamical environment that vehicles must operate within. Lunar development demands a robust understanding of these complex dynamics.

Organization within cislunar space’s dynamics can be uncovered by leveraging dynamical systems theory, a branch of applied mathematics that allows us to construct a geometric picture of motion in chaotic systems. Typically, the building blocks of the geometric picture are special solutions such as equilibrium points and periodic orbits along with their stable and unstable manifolds. This talk will present recent research that focuses on leveraging quasi-periodic orbits, a generalized class of bounded motion. Quasi-periodic orbits occur much more frequently and can therefore be utilized to form a more complete understanding of cislunar motion. The seminar will illustrate the benefits of this more complete picture by showing how it can be applied to enable key technologies for Lunar development such as the fuel-efficient maneuvering between various cislunar regions, the accurate mapping of orbits near the Moon, and the coordination of multiple vehicles in unstable regimes.

Bio: Damennick Henry is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the VADeR Laboratory at the University of Colorado. In the fall of 2025, he will begin as an assistant professor in the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics department at the University of Minnesota where his research will focus on developing geometric theory and computational techniques to uncover order in chaotic dynamical environments that the next generation of spacecraft will operate in. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2018 and PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from ���������� Boulder in 2024 as a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow and Smead Scholar.

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Dale Lawrence
Professor, Smead Aerospace
Wednesday, Feb. 26 | 1:45 P.M. | AERO 111

Abstract: A system of balloon-borne instruments to conduct descending (wake free) measurements of fine-scale turbulence is described, developed as part of an AFOSR Multi-University Research Initiative called HYFLITS (HYpersonic Flight In the Turbulent Stratosphere).  The system consists of custom high-rate hotwire anemometer and coldwire thermometer, integrated with a commercial radiosonde and a particle sensor, and GPS position and velocity sensing and radio telemetry in a small gondola. The balloon apogee and descent rate are controlled via a custom venting valve in the neck of the balloon to release lifting gas. A custom ground station equipped with an automatic balloon tracking high-gain antenna receives the telemetered measurement data. Development of this system focused on accessing altitudes of interest in the stratosphere for future hypersonic vehicles and to facilitate numerous turbulence observations by lowering the cost of equipment and flight operations. The system is also lightweight enough to be classified as an “unregulated” free balloon in the US and a “light” free balloon in Europe, reducing obstacles due to airspace regulations.

The HYFLITS system has been used in an extended campaign to conduct more than 200 flights observing turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate (e) and temperature structure function parameter (C_T²) with 5m vertical resolution in flights descending from up to 33km and down to 3km. Flights have occurred in Colorado, Minnesota, Florida, Virginia (NASA Wallops), northern Sweden (Esrange), Antarctica (Syowa Station) and Indonesia (Kototabang).

This talk will discuss details of the observation system and its operation, overview the observations to date, and provide an outline of the data reduction and calibration methods used to obtain e and C_T² characterization of turbulence from telemetered data.

Bio: Dale Lawrence has worked most of his career at the intersection of dynamics/control theory and practical applications. This work has been driven by interest in a variety of applications, available funding opportunities, and collaboration with students and colleagues, which has resulted in contributions over a rather eclectic range of problems in system identification and adaptive control, disk drives, tele- and micro-robotics, haptic interfaces, line-of-sight stabilization, solar sail spacecraft, small UAV design and control, and most recently, measurement of atmospheric turbulence and UAV precision landing. 

Professor Lawrence received a B.S. from Colorado State University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Subsequently he worked for Martin Marietta Astronautics (now Lockheed Martin) and returned to academia at the University of Cincinnati before joining the University of Colorado in 1991. He is currently a Professor in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department. 
 

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Jesse Steicher
Research Scientist, Stanford University
Monday, Feb. 17 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The design of next-generation, high-speed flight vehicles requires a combination of robust flow simulations and low-uncertainty ground test data. Although high-fidelity modeling advancements have improved flow simulations, experimental ground testing has lacked the required measurement sensitivity for model validation, especially at high temperatures. Significant progress in sensitive optical diagnostic techniques, coupled with the expansion of nation-wide ground test facilities, now offers renewed interest and opportunities to advance ground test measurements. 

Recent experimental studies – leveraging quantum-state-specific laser absorption diagnostics – enable measurements of many high-temperature air species, including molecular oxygen (O2), nitric oxide (NO), molecular nitrogen (N2) using CO as a tracer, atomic oxygen (O), and atomic nitrogen (N). These quantum-state-specific time-histories have been used to infer internal energy excitation and chemical reaction rates for important nonequilibrium processes for shock-heated air with the necessary sensitivity for model validation.

Experiments performed in shock tubes probe temperatures from 2,000 - 14,000 K and pressures from 0.022 - 1.524 atm, extending to higher temperatures than any past studies. The resulting quantum-state-specific time-histories were used to isolate key reaction rates in high-temperature nonequilibrium in air. Extension of this measurement technique can apply similar methods to study nonequilibrium relevant to entry to other planetary atmospheres, ablation chemistry, and ionized flows, extending validation data to a wider range of flow conditions and design considerations.

Bio: Jesse Streicher is a research scientist from Prof. Ron Hanson's shock tube laboratory at Stanford University. He graduated with his PhD in 2022, and his postdoctoral research has advanced new techniques for measuring very high vibrational states and high-temperature reaction rates. His research has developed new laser absorption diagnostics for Stanford and the NASA Ames electric arc shock tube (EAST) and inferred time-histories and reaction rates at the extreme conditions relevant to hypersonic and atmospheric entry flows.

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Demoz Gebre-Egziabher
Professor, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Friday, Jan. 31 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: Safety-critical aerospace guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems typically rely on physical redundancy to ensure reliability. However, in emerging applications where size, weight, and power constraints limit the feasibility of hardware redundancy, alternatives are needed. This presentation explores the concept of analytical redundancy, where mathematical models are used as virtual sensors in lieu of physically redundant sensors. Using synthetic air data estimation as a case study, we will explore the issues and challenges surrounding analytical redundancy and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. As a concrete example, we will show results from using a synthetic air data system as a backup for a pitot-static system on an unmanned aerial vehicle used in precision agriculture. In closing, we discuss open research questions that need to be addressed to advance acceptance of the concept of analytical redundancy.

Bio: Demoz Gebre-Egziabher is a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. At the University of Minnesota, he teaches courses in aerospace systems and directs a research lab focusing on the design of multi-sensor navigation and attitude determination systems for aerospace vehicles.  He is the current director of the NASA/Minnesota Space Grant Consortium. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation (ION) and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).  From 1990 to 1996 he was systems engineer at NAVSEA in Washington, D.C.  

Dr. Gebre-Egziabher holds a B.S in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Arizona, a M.S in Mechanical Engineering from the George Washington University and a Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University.  He is a registered professional engineer (mechanical engineering).

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The world’s largest commercial space imaging company and one of Colorado’s premier aerospace companies

Dan Smoot
CEO, Maxar Intelligence
Tuesday, Jan. 21 | 4 P.M. | AERO N240

Please join Mark Sirangelo as he welcomes Dan Smoot, the CEO of Maxar Intelligence for a discussion of his career, global space data creation and the future of space imagery and imaging technology.

Maxar (also the owner of Digital Globe and Worldview) is the operator of the most advanced commercial Earth observation constellation on orbit. It collects over 3.8 million sq km of high-res imagery every day, operates in over 85 countries with over 2,600 employees including 600+ software developers and has over 125 petabytes of data.

Since November 2023, Dan has been leading Maxar’s push to bring the geospatial industry into a new age of intelligence. For over three decades, he has helped scale some of the world’s most innovative IT companies and worked closely with the defense and intelligence communities to integrate cutting-edge technologies into national security architectures. Today, Dan is guiding Maxar’s evolution to deliver secure, software-enabled products that use the power of geospatial data and technology get mission-critical insights, faster.

Dan became CEO in November 2023. Prior to joining Maxar, he served as CEO of Riverbed Technology, where he led the IT company’s transformation from a hardware provider to a software-focused business that today serves government and commercial customers, including national security agencies and 95% of the Fortune 100. Dan had also previously served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Customer Officer throughout his tenure at the company.

Prior to Riverbed Technology, Dan held several senior roles at Salesforce, including Executive Vice President of Global Partner Sales and Executive Vice President of Market Readiness. Earlier in his career, Dan served as Senior Vice President of Global Customer Operations at VMWare and held a variety of senior sales, operations and finance roles over 13 years at Cisco. Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from UC Irvine. He is a board member of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Western Affiliate and was previously the Chairman of the AHA’s Greater Bay Area chapter.

Mark N. Sirangelo created and hosts the ���������� Future Insight Seminar Series as ����������’s Entrepreneur-Scholar in Residence. He is the recent Chairman of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Board and the DoD’s Space Advisory Committee.  Previously he was Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator helping to develop NASA’s return to the Moon.  Mark was the founding executive and head of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems and has served as the Chief Innovation Officer of Colorado.

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Alexandre Martin
Professor of Aerospace Engineering, University of Kentucky
Friday, Jan. 24 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The Kentucky Re-entry Universal Payload System (KRUPS) provides a quick-turnaround, low-cost platform to conduct atmospheric entry experiments. KRUPS is designed to test multiple types of thermal protection systems (TPS) and scientific instrumentation. Five KRUPS capsules were sent to the International Space Station (ISS) via the NG-20 Cygnus resupply vehicle. These five capsules constitute the second Kentucky Re-entry Payload Experiment (KREPE-2) mission, each with a different heat shield TPS material. The data obtained during the mission will help with the reconstruction of the atmospheric entry environment and validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and material response (MR) models developed at the University of Kentucky.

Bio: Alexandre Martin is the EJ Nutter Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kentucky, where he has been since 2010. He obtained a B.Sc. in Physics in 1998 from the University of Montréal (Québec, Canada), and an M.Sc.A. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from École Polytechnique, Montréal (Québec, Canada). He has worked in the field of fluid-solid interactions for the last 20 years, contributing to various scientific discipline ranging from hypersonic aerothermodynamics, plasma physics, and numerical algorithm. He is especially interested in ablation, the removal of solid material by energy exchanges. Over the years of his scientific career, he has developed and supervised computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer codes that were able to model various types of ablation. More specifically, he focuses his work on ablation of the heat shields of atmospheric entry vehicles, as part of NASA, DoD and industry funded projects.

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