Engineering Commons^™

Optimal Slewing Of A Constrained Telescope Using Seventh Order Polynomial Input Torques, Julia K. Bush

Master's Theses

Two-axis gimbals are frequently used to point cameras and telescopes at various points of interest for surveillance, science, and art. The rotation of a two-axis gimbal system is governed by nonlinear angular momentum equations of motion. This paper presents a method for slewing a telescope in space with a gimbaled sensor attached to a nominally non-rotating spacecraft using two seventh order polynomial input functions to characterize torques. To accomplish this task, picking the optimal coefficients of the seventh order polynomial was necessary. It was also desired to use constraint equations to limit the excursion, angular velocity, angular acceleration, and jerk …

Computation Time Comparison Between Matlab And C++ Using Launch Windows, Tyler Andrews

Aerospace Engineering

Processing speed between Matlab and C++ was compared by examining launch windows and handling large amounts of data found in pork chop plots. A compilation of code was generated in Matlab to produce the plots and an identical file was created in C++ that was then compiled and run in Matlab to plot the data. This file is known as a MEX-file. This report outlines some of the basics when working with MEX-files and the problems that face users. For Lambert’s solver, multi revolution cases were considered and some pork chop plots of single revolution trajectories were plotted. Three different …

Accelerating Lambert's Problem On The Gpu In Matlab, Nathan Parrish

Aerospace Engineering

The challenges and benefits of using the GPU to compute solutions to Lambert’s Problem are discussed. Three algorithms (Universal Variables, Gooding’s algorithm, and Izzo’s algorithm) were adapted for GPU computation directly within MATLAB. The robustness of each algorithm was considered, along with the speed at which it could be computed on each of three computers. All algorithms used were found to be completely robust. Computation time was measured for computation within a for-loop, a parfor-loop, and a call to the MATLAB command ‘arrayfun’ with gpuArray-type inputs. Then, a Universal Variables Lambert’s solver was written in CUDA and compiled for use …

Empennage Sizing And Aircraft Stability Using Matlab, Ryan C. Struett

Aerospace Engineering

No abstract provided.

Cubesat Mission Planning Toolbox, Brian Castello

Master's Theses

We are in an era of massive spending cuts in educational institutions, aerospace companies and governmental entities. Educational institutions are pursuing more training for less money, aerospace companies are reducing the cost of gaining ight heritage and the government is cutting budgets and their response times. Organizations are accomplishing this improved efficiency by moving away from large-scale satellite projects and developing pico and nanosatellites following the CubeSat specifications. One of the major challenges of developing satellites to the standard CubeSat mission requirements is meeting the exceedingly tight power, data and communication constraints.

A MATLAB toolbox was created to assist the …