Instrumentation Commons^™

Eliminating Range Constraints For Optical Tracking Of Sub-10 Cm Orbital Debris, James Kirk

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

The growing population of orbital debris, including a significant amount of debris ranging from 1 to 10 cm, has substantially increased the risk to satellites. Due to the sheer number and high velocities, debris ranging from 1 to 10 cm still has the ability to cause mission-ending damage while remaining undetectable by ground-based detection facilities. This study utilizes the NASA Standard Satellite Breakup Model (NASA SSBM), combined with MATLAB, to propagate debris clouds over extended durations, enabling the identification of high-detection zones and debris rings. Using the modeled spacecraft environment, a satellite was positioned below the debris ring altitudes. Lowering …

Design And Verification Of The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer Camera Field Programmable Gate Arrays, Jordan M. Johnson

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Multi-Slit Solar Explorer, or MUSE, is a NASA mission that will take images of the Sun to study solar flares and the solar corona. The mission will provide insight into the mechanisms behind space weather. The mission consists of two cameras: the Spectrograph (SG), and the Context Imager (CI). The Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory is providing both cameras for the mission.

This report describes a part of the design and verification process for a central component on these cameras known as the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). These FPGAs are programmed to acquire, handle, and send images …

A Digital Calibration Source For 21 Cm Cosmology Telescopes, Kalyani Balkrishna Bhopi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Precise calibration of radio telescope beams and gains is a central requirement for 21 cm intensity mapping experiments, which aim to measure large scale cosmological structure through the redshifted emission line of neutral hydrogen. Bright astrophysical foregrounds dominate the sky at these frequencies, and separating them from the cosmological signal demands precise control over instrumental systematics, particularly the telescope beam and its frequency-dependent response. Existing aerial calibration sources are incoherent broadband emitters, detectable only as total power. They provide no direct phase information and suffer from poor sensitivity in low signal-to-noise regimes.

We present the Precision Emitter for 21cm Array …

Development Of A Fluxgate Magnetometer Model, Eleonora Olsmats

Honors Theses and Capstones

As a part of the UNH SWFO-L1 mission to monitor space weather and the sun’s behavior, the fluxgate magnetometer is an important component to measure external magnetic fields. The basic principle of a fluxgate magnetometer is to detect changes in the ambient magnetic field by inducing a magnetic field in a ferromagnetic material via a drive winding. Each magnetometer is unique due to the ferromagnetic properties of the core material which can be seen in the hysteresis loop which is a relationship between the magnetic field strength (H) and the induced magnetic field (B). Measuring the hysteresis of a fluxgate …

Inferential Statistics And Information Theoretical Measures: An Approach To Interference Detection In Radio Astronomy, Morgan R. Dameron

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In a time when technology is rapidly growing, radio observatories are now able to expand their computational power to achieve higher receiver sensitivity power and a more flexible realtime computing approach to probe the universe for its composition and study new astronomical phenomena. This allows searches to go deeper into the universe, and results in the recording of massive quantities of observed data. At the same time, this increases the amount of radio frequency interference (RFI) found in the obtained observatory data. The high power of RFI easily masks the low power of extraterrestrial signals, making them hard to detect …

Transform Based Approaches For The Detection Of Astrophysical Signals, Marwan Mahfud Alkhweldi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Development of new algorithms for the detection of isolated astrophysical pulses is of interest to radio astronomers. Both Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and several Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs) were detected through the application of a single pulse search algorithm. The conventional approach to detect astronomical pulses requires an exhaustive search for the correct dispersion measure. Its accelerated versions involve signal processing in Fourier transform space.

In this dissertation, we present several new transform-based approaches for the detection and analysis of astrophysical signals with the latest being the most effective and advanced of all. It is implemented in several steps. First, …

Electrical Characteristics Of A Balloon-Borne Radiation Instrument, Elena Pradhan, Jared Fuchs

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

High Dynamic Range Optical Devices And Applications., Elijah Robert Jensen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much of what we know about fundamental physical law and the universe derives from observations and measurements using optical methods. The passive use of the electromagnetic spectrum can be the best way of studying physical phenomenon in general with minimal disturbance of the system in the process. While for many applications ambient visible light is sufficient, light outside of the visible range may convey more information. The signals of interest are also often a small fraction of the background, and their changes occur on time scales so quickly that they are visually imperceptible. This thesis reports techniques and technologies developed …

Near Earth Space Object Detection Utilizing Parallax As Multi-Hypothesis Test Criterion, Joseph C. Tompkins

Theses and Dissertations

The US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) operated Space Surveillance Network (SSN) is tasked with Space Situational Awareness (SSA) for the US military. This system is made up of Electro-Optic sensors such as the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) and Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) as well as RADAR based sensors such as the Space Fence. While Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence is very adept at detecting & tracking objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) below 3000 Km in height [1], gaps remain in the tracking of Resident Space Objects (RSO’s) in Geosynchronous Orbits (GEO) due to limitations associated with the implementation of …

Thermal Evolution Of Moon, Arshdeep Singh Gill

Master's Theses

In August, 2014 three experiments were conducted using infrared systems deployed at White Mountain Research center, CA. The data was acquired for the whole month of August. Teams of 3-4 students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Santa Barbara were stationed at the research center for 2-3 days to operate the equipment. The three experiments were:(1) creating spatial-temporal time series of lunar surface temperatures;(2) identifying atmospheric meteor trails;(3) search for meteor impacts on the Moon surface. Out of the three this thesis focusses on experiment 1 and the results from this experiment could also help with the other …

High Power Optically Pumped Semiconductor Lasers For Sodium Guidestar Applications, Shawn W. Hackett

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

Optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) are shown to provide a much more compact and less expensive source for illumination of the sodium layer of the mesosphere for use as a sodium laser guidestar via single and two photon excitation schemes. This represents a revolution in laser guidestar technology as the cost, size, and power requirements for a laser guidestar system are shown to have been decreased by an order of magnitude with guidestar performance shown to be similar to previous sources. Sodium laser guidestar sources for broadband simultaneous illumination of multiple lines are developed and simulated. Simulations are then compared …

Tools And Methods To Optimize The Analysis Of Telescopic Performance Metrics On Sofia, Steven R. Wilson, Holger Jakob, Stefan Teufel, Zaheer Ali, Jeffrey Van Cleve, Brian Eney, Greg Perryman

STAR Program Research Presentations

SOFIA is an infrared observatory mounted on a modified 747 engineered to do infrared astronomy at 45000 feet. The telescope equipment contains a number of sensors and stabilizers that allow the telescope to capture images while mounted in a moving plane. We have developed methods to analyze the performance of the telescope assembly that will help improve the stabilization and image capturing performance of the observatory. Here we present reusable methods to analyze telescope performance data that will enable improvements in the quality of the scientific data that is produced by the SOFIA. This poster focuses on the multi-flight performance …

Development And Demonstration Of A Field-Deployable Fast Chromotomographic Imager, Daniel C. O'Dell

Theses and Dissertations

A field deployable hyperspectral imager utilizing chromotomography (CT), with a direct vision prism (DVP) as the dispersive element, has been constructed at AFIT. This research is focused on the development and demonstration of the CT imager. An overview of hyperspectral imaging, chromotomography, a synopsis of reconstruction algorithms, and other CT instruments are given. The importance of component alignment, instrument calibration, and exact prism angular position data are discussed. A simplistic \shift and add" reconstruction algorithm was utilized for this research. Although limited in its ability to reconstruct a spatially and spectrally diverse scene, the algorithm was adequate for the testing …

A Three-Dimensional Pattern-Space Representation For Volumetric Arrays, William C. Barott, Paul G. Steffes

Publications

A three-dimensional pattern-space representation is presented for volumetric arrays. In this representation, the radiation pattern of an array is formed by the evaluation of the three-dimensional pattern-space on a spherical surface. The scan angle of the array determines the position of this surface within the pattern-space. This pattern-space representation is used in conjunction with a genetic algorithm to minimize the sidelobe levels exhibited by a thinned volumetric array during scanning.

Aliasing Reduction In Staring Infrared Imagers Utilizing Subpixel Techniques, Joseph C. Gillette, Thomas M. Stadtmiller, Russell C. Hardie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We introduce and analyze techniques for the reduction of aliased signal energy in a staring infrared imaging system. A standard staring system uses a fixed two-dimensional detector array that corresponds to a fixed spatial sampling frequency determined by the detector pitch or spacing. Aliasing will occur when sampling a scene containing spatial frequencies exceeding half the sampling frequency. This aliasing can significantly degrade the image quality. The aliasing reduction schemes presented here, referred to as microscanning, exploit subpixel shifts between time frames of an image sequence. These multiple images are used to reconstruct a single frame with reduced aliasing. If …