STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

Felicity Zhou

The goal of this project was to graph a Hohmann Transfer with only the initial position of the Interceptor, and the initial position of the Target. Using various equations, a script that could graph any Hohmann Transfer, as long as the initial variables were given, was created. Additionally, the script was able to identify all major points and times of the transfer, which were the wait time, the first burn, the time of ballistic flight, and the second burn. This script was able to meet the final goal of graphing a complete Hohmann Transfer.

Luke Schwab

Small Satellites (smallsats) are one of the newest, fastest growing markets in the space technology industry. Currently, most smallsats lack thruster technologies. This makes them unable to perform orbital maneuvers and orbital maintenance procedures in order to increase the lifespan of this technology. Recently, there have been problems with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and promising small satellites have been limited in their ability to orbit, due to the threat of orbital debris. This research into Hohmann Transfers offers insight into the possibilities of orbital maneuvering for small satellites to increase lifespan, allowing for safe orbiting within the Earth’s atmosphere.

Dylan Morrison-Fogel

The intent of this research is to develop a method of low-thrust trajectory design for a Newtonian gravity field. Solutions to Hamiltonian equations of optimal control problem are investigated. Trajectories will be extremal or optimal constrained by a two-point boundary value problem and applicable cost function for minimal fuel missions are in terms of the Mayer variational problem. Methods used and algorithms developed are an application of optimal control theory in spaceflight mechanics. Thrust arcs adhere the optimal thrust direction to the primer vector. Concepts presented demonstrate the utility of low thrust electric propulsion systems for small spacecraft.

Likeke Aipa

In this presentation, the results of ongoing studies for the design of trans-lunar and trans-Earth trajectory simulations have been presented as part of trajectory design to support Moon missions. The goal of this study is to design the construction of family of trajectories for trans-lunar and trans-Earth trajectories from low Earth orbit to low Moon orbit including the departure and arrival thrust arcs. Equations of motion were numerically integrated with selected initial conditions to determine the flight path of respective spacecraft. The simulated trajectories can become key components in future Earth to Moon sample return missions.

Jonathan De Leon

The purpose of this research is to develop an analytical solution for rendezvous maneuvers of small satellites using constant thrust in a uniform gravitational field. Current satellites use numerical methods, which are much slower and computationally more expensive than their analytical solution counterparts. Since analytical solutions are faster, they are more desirable in autonomous maneuvers which are in high demand for small satellites, which themselves have been increasing in number over the past few years.

Preston Tran, James Thesken, Sean, Agpaoa, and Gabor Paczolay

Manned extraterrestrial missions are restricted by the level of support technologies that need to be developed for schedule optimization and duration extensions. Box Farm is an indoor semi-autonomous hydroponics garden that uses a robotic system to plant, water, transfer, monitor, and harvest vegetables in the Inflatable Lunar Mars Habitat (ILMH) greenhouse built by the University of North Dakota. It aims to reduce the number of man-hours spent tending to the greenhouse by maintaining a steady supply of vegetables. The system is designed to regulate all phases of a plant’s life cycle.

Ahlora Martin and Hannah Vien Villadelgado

A spherical joint is used in multiple industries such as the automobile industry and is beneficial to physical therapy. Multidirectional Instability of the shoulder (MDI) is described as the looseness of the joint in the shoulder because of increased mobility, resulting in weakness of joint. MDI has been known to cause instability in the scapula. Analysis of joint movement will increase the range of motion and improve daily function for specific populations such as athletes. With the spherical joint and the correct linkage equations, they will be able to help others with increased motion in reachability zones.

Jayla Reyes-Kapuniai and Lillian Shibata

Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology is a step in the advancement of autonomous motion capabilities and navigational systems. This technology is used to scan and model objects to a precise, accurate degree. Since there is approximately a 6 to 60-minute dead time for communication between Mars and Earth, there must be a way to negate the dead time, removing the dependence of the rover on human instructions. The application of LIDAR technology on planetary rovers is the first step in a fully autonomous rover. Samples were taken on processing applications and measurements were recorded to evaluate LIDAR’s capability.

Suzy Chung and Justin Deuz

One thing that is overlooked is general information on asteroids and planetary defense against it. Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are constantly orbiting Earth and could cause potentially catastrophic events. This project is focused on 3 asteroids: Bennu, Apophis, and 2017 XO2 Ephemeris. The trajectories of these asteroids will be calculated and provide a rough estimate of where the asteroid will be in respect to the Earth at a certain time. Given this information, it could be put to use in the future for simulations of projectile deflection.

Matthew Leonard, Leonardo Sabetta, Ryan Castillo, and Matthieu Kalua

C.14 in NASA NSPIRES is a solicitation call that wants mission like developments in planetary science research. We are refining our proposal to appeal to this solicitation, and are currently focusing on a neural network that can communicate Guidance, Navigation, and Control information through optical communications.

Matthew Leonard

Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) technologies have had an increase in exposure and demand contemporaneous with the success of companies such as tesla and spacex. The use of arithmetic algebra and category theory provide a unique framework for generating analytic controls. By introducing a new form of criteria for operation, epic and monic evolutions, we are able to introduce a new framework for defining the effectiveness of data generated. It has the availability for integration with fuzzy neural networks, of which we hope to introduce with a more rigorous computational framework.

Taylor Todd and Nathan O’Leary

Recently on the Big Island of Hawaii, lava eruptions and daily exposure to smoke have posed a large health risk for the island inhabitants. The smoke contains PM₂.₅, particles of pollutant present in air. At a size of 2.5 microns or less, PM₂.₅ is known to cause a wide variety of health problems. We created a burn chamber to measure the change in PM₂.₅ in the air during the burning of sample matter, simulating a lava flow. We incorporate past research and our programmed sensors to observe the change in PM₂.₅ concentration in high humidity.

Kaʻilena Sales and John Chen

Following our previous years’ particulate matter concentration sensor, we decided to switch our Arduino platform to the raspberry pi platform. In doing this, we will be able to include more additional factors that may impact our data readings, such as: temperature, humidity, pressure, and the use of wireless communication. In the end, we will be able to aid our counterpart group in finding new correlations in how certain factors might affect our readings.

Tyler Myers and Branden Lucas

Retrieving samples from Mars is of the utmost importance, however, the tools needed to do so are only good if they are clean. A bio-barrier is used to prevent Earth microbes from contacting the tools that are meant to work with Martian soil. This allows accurate data on composition and other physical properties to be collected. Guidelines have been put in place set by the Planetary Protection Office, but making a system that works within these limits can be tough. Innovation is a mindset we embrace to solve the problems of the future, starting with our design concepts.

Christopher Blake

Mars Missions have been ongoing since 1964, with the first landing in 1976. Entry, Descent and Landing is an essential portion of a Mars mission. This project simulates the translational and rotational motion using Newtons Second Law & Euler Rotational Equations of Motion. The translational motion of the entry vehicle will show the Time vs Velocity, Height, & Position as a result of a thrust opposite of motion. While the entry vehicles rotational motion will be described with respect to a moving frame and an inertial frame such as the surface and center of mass of Mars.

Melissa Onishi

NASA’s past Mars missions such as Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers and the Mars Science Laboratory projects have led to the necessity of designing the next generation of landers with the goal of achieving safe and precise landing. This presentation describes improvements to the current design of three primary phases throughout the entry, descent and landing maneuver. These phases are the exoatmospheric thrust phase, atmospheric transit phase and powered descent and landing phase. A two-dimensional trajectory analyses for each phase are presented for a wide range of constant specific impulse and thrust-to-weight ratio along with an illustrative example.

Minji Jo

Synthesis of feasible and extremal planetary entry, descent and landing trajectories is investigated for a central Newtonian field. In this synthesis, all trajectories are started with the initial thrust arc and ended with the final thrust arc, and the ballistic arc connects both thrust arcs. The proposed synthesis is presented for feasible and extremal and fuel-optimal trajectories. The feasible trajectories are designed with the 7-state model and the extremal trajectories are considered with the 14-state model. The proposed synthesis can be used in mission design for planetary landing missions including moon and Mars missions, and sample return missions.

Kammi Matsumoto

A quadcopter is simulated with constant PID coefficients while changing the length to determine a range of lengths for these PID coefficients. A MATLAB simulation determines gamma and compares it to the max gamma and torques for a predetermined length. It is impossible if the experimental torque is greater than the maximum torque for the PID coefficients. Quaternions eliminate the singularities that result from using roll, pitch, and yaw and can be extended to determine the classical Rodrigues parameters. Possible future studies PID control could be used on Rodrigues parameters based on the direction cosine matrix for the (313) sequence.

Created by Olivia Kwon Presented by Kammi Matsumoto

The 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th derivatives of the aircraft equations of motion are determined to compute the velocity, acceleration, jerk and snap vectors. These vectors are presented as functions of the flight path angle and time. The analytical solutions for each of the derivatives can be used when expressing these vectors in terms of the flight path angle. The magnitudes of the jerk and snap vectors allow us to study the noise profile in terms of flight path angle and time. This analysis can be extended to reducing noise in other vehicles such as quadcopters.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will be deployed for agricultural applications for Kauai Coffee Company (KCC), which contains four million coffee trees spanning 3100 acres. ACTUAS follows a systems engineering approach where its mission is to design a fixed-wing drone (FWD) to survey KCC’s fields with multispectral cameras to analyze tree growth rate. MATLAB simulates the drone’s quadratic relationship of thrust and velocity. The FWD assembled is the My Twin Dream with separate cameras used for analysis and flight. Mission Planner analyzes flight data and conducts waypoint navigation. Upon completion, ACTUAS can be expanded for similar applications.

Evan Kawamura

This study aims to develop targeting, guidance, navigation, and control functions and their integration for applications, and the goal of the research study is to create a framework for autonomous control technology for unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time target-relative guidance capabilities. Optimal control formulation leads to trivial and nontrivial cases for finding state and co-state vectors. Explicit guidance is modified and integrated with optimal control for a quadcopter. Two illustrative examples, traveling to a point of interest at an agricultural field and performing a roll maneuver, are considered to demonstrate the utility of guidance, navigation, and control functions.

Jong Wook Shin and John Paul Batarao

The University of Guam’s (UOG) UAV Organization is attempting to build affordable UAVs and teach the utilization of open source programs to obtain and process data. Our organization has collected data from an aerial perspective of a local wetland where a three-dimensional model and analysis of environmental health was created using an open source program, Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS). In this presentation, we will discuss the process of both data collection and geospatial analysis.

John Paul Batarao

With the rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology and its potential in data collection for research students, The University of Guam’s UAV club have begun to develop affordable UAVs and corresponding open source analysis software. One of our ongoing projects has been to build a working flight log analyzer to develop stabilization algorithms for specialized research UAVs benchmarking current available manufactured UAVs.