Current Research
Space Situational Awareness
- Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is knowledge of the situation in outer space to inform a spacecraft operator’s decisions
- Current research focuses on uncertainty quantification, estimation theory, multi-target filtering, and information-theoretic tasking of sensors
- Previous research also includes computationally efficient orbit state propagation and conjunction assessment
- A lot of our current work is focused on maneuvering space objects and uncertainty propagation in cislunar space
Uncertainty Quantification
- Develop new methods of orbit determination and uncertainty quantification to meet demands for near- and long-term spacecraft missions and SSA
- Previous research includes the development of mission design tools to enable robust maneuver planning for outer planets missions and conjunction assessment
- This research includes elements of spacecraft mission design, risk analysis, and uncertainty quantification
Spacecraft Navigation
- Develop novel methods of spacecraft navigation for missions at the Moon and asteroids
- Most of our navigation work focuses on vision-based and new sensing modalities, e.g., event-based cameras
- This includes the SCOPE-1 satellite mission funded by NASA to test terrain-relative navigation methods in low-Earth orbit
Previous Research Projects
Asteroid Impact Mitigation
- This previous work quantified the effects on an impactor’s trajectory and the asteroid material properties on the realized change in velocity post-impact
Geolocation
- This work looked at improving orbit state estimation accuracy for communication satellites using TDOA and FDOA measurements
- The improved satellite ephemeris may then be used to locate sources of radio-frequency (RF) interference
- The process of pinpointing the source of the signal originating from the Earth is known as geolocation
Autonomous Navigation About Asteroids
- This work applied LiAISON navigation to the problem of autonomously navigating two spacecraft in orbit about an asteroid
- Results demonstrated that navigation may be performed simultaneously with gravity field estimation
Computationally Efficient Models for Gravity Field Estimation and Evaluation
- My Ph.D. work was in the development of new models for computationally efficient estimation and evaluation of the gravity field
- This work, most notably the developed cubed-sphere model, is in use by multiple non-academic organizations for computationally efficient orbit propagation
