AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SCIENCES

EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AND GRADUATE EDUCATION

AEROSPACE

ENGINEERING

SCIENCES

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

This is an exciting time for CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. Our graduate program ranks in the top 10 in U.S. News and World Report’s

2015 edition of Best Graduate Schools. Through the commitment of the campus, our student enrollments and faculty rosters continue to grow. The department is also playing a lead role in the campuswide AeroSpace Ventures Initiative, a collaboration among aerospace-related departments, institutes, centers and industry partners to create knowledge and develop new technologies to observe, measure and better understand Earth and space. Our outstanding faculty and students are creating cutting-edge aerospace technologies and making new discoveries in geosciences

with innovative small satellites, unmanned aircraft systems and scientific instruments. We are delighted to introduce you to a few of our exceptional people and provide highlights of current projects across the spectrum of our research areas.

I hope you will enjoy this glimpse into the life of the department. We welcome your com-ments and engagement. Please let me know how you might like to be involved in creating new aerospace opportunities at CU-Boulder. Best Regards,

Penina Axelrad

Professor and Chair

Dear Colleagues, Alumni and Friends,

Front cover: Anthony Carfang tests one of his autonomous unmanned aircraft at Table Mountain,

a mesa west of Longmont, Colorado. Above: Engineering Center, CU-Boulder

Professors

Brian M. Argrow, CU President’s Teaching Scholar

Penina Axelrad, AES Department Chair

Sedat Biringen

George H. Born, Director Emeritus of CCAR

Xinzhao Chu, CIRES

William J. Emery Carlos Felippa

Jeffrey M. Forbes, Glenn Murphy Chair

Kenneth E. Jansen Lakshmi Kantha Jean N. Koster Kristine M. Larson Dale Lawrence Xinlin Li, LASP

Kurt Maute, Director of CAS, Joseph T. Negler Professor

R. Steven Nerem, Associate Director of CCAR

Scott Palo, Associate Dean for Research, Victor Charles Schelke Professor

Hanspeter Schaub, AES Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs

Daniel J. Scheeres, Seebass Chair, AES Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs

Jeffrey Thayer, Director of CCAR, Roubos Chair

Associate Professors

Dennis Akos

Eric W. Frew, Director of RECUV, H. Joseph Smead Faculty Fellow

Mahmoud Hussein, H. Joseph Smead Faculty Fellow

David Klaus, Associate Director of BioServe Space Technologies, CU President’s Teaching Scholar James Nabity

Assistant Professors

Nisar Ahmed Alireza Doostan John A. Evans John Farnsworth Jeffrey Parker Ryan Starkey

Zoltan Sternovsky, LASP

Research Professors

Delores Knipp Robert Leben

Louis Stodieck, Director of BioServe Space Technologies

Assistant Research Professors

Brandon A. Jones Jay McMahon

Senior Instructors

Donna S. Gerren Trudy Schwartz Joseph Tanner

Instructor

Jelliffe Jackson

Scholar in Residence

James Voss

Professors Adjunct

Michael McGrath, LASP

Howard Singer, NOAA

Associate Professors Adjunct

Harvey Gates Han-li Liu

Professors Emeriti

Chuen-Yen Chow Robert D. Culp Peter Freymuth K.C. Park Howard Snyder

Aerospace Engineering Sciences Faculty—Fall 2014

As a graduate student, Bruce Davis (left) worked with Associate Professor Mahmoud Hussein

(right), who pioneered the discovery of a new type of nanostructured thermoelectric material

that someday could efficiently turn heat wasted at power plants into more electricity.

BUILDING NANOPILLARS TO ADVANCE ENERGY

CONVERSION

To reduce heat flow in a material, an Aerospace Engineering Sciences (AES) scientist and a doctoral student have shown it can be done not by introducing obstacles in the material to impede the transmission of energy, as is common practice, but rather by adding onto the material.

This innovative discovery promises to radically improve thermoelectric materials, a finding that could lead to the development of more energy-efficient cooling equipment and possibly the creation of new devices that could turn the vast amounts of heat wasted at power plants into more electricity.

The concept involves building an array of tiny pillars on top of a sheet of thermoelectric material, says Associate Professor Mahmoud Hussein, who pioneered the discovery. “A significant improvement of thermoelectric energy conversion will broaden the sources for energy recovery,” says Hussein, “to include laptops, solar panels, airplanes and more.” The concept was highlighted in the American Physical Society’s Physicsjournal and other media outlets such as IEEE Spectrum and Yale Environment 360.

Bruce Davis (MS AeroEngr ’08, PhD AeroEng ’13), a former doctoral student of Hussein’s, worked with him on the project. Davis is now a senior engineer at Roccor, a small startup in Louisville that develops deployable composite structures for spacecraft. “At a small startup you need to be able to think creatively and outside the box,” says Davis.

“My experience at CU-Boulder helped prepare me for my career in the aerospace industry, whether through my involvement with the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, a student club on campus; working on technical projects outside my PhD, such as the DANDE spacecraft; and finally the rigor of the AES PhD program itself.”

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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“A significant improvement

of thermoelectric energy

conversion will broaden

the sources for energy

recovery,” says Hussein,

“to include laptops, solar

panels, airplanes and more.”

DEVELOPING AN ATTITUDE DETERMINATION SYSTEM

FOR QB50 CUBESATS

The chance to actually design, build and fly small satellites is what attracts many top students to Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU-Boulder.

Scott Palo, associate dean for research and a professor in the department, is principal inves-tigator or co-invesinves-tigator on multiple cubesat projects that involve graduate, undergraduate and even high school students.

The Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment (CSSWE) CubeSat was launched in 2012 and is currently in orbit measuring energetic particles. It will be followed in 2015 by the Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS), scheduled to launch in 2015 and observe the sun. CU is also part of the QB50 program, an international effort to launch 50 cubesats from a single launch vehicle to study the re-entry region of the Earth’s atmosphere. Professor Palo has worked with over 100 students from engineering and science departments across campus on these programs.

The opportunity to engage in both scientific inquiry and engineering design led doctoral student Nick Rainville to CU-Boulder. CU is unique in the curriculum it offers and the opportunities to build systems and instruments to conduct cutting-edge science. Rainville is now working with Professor Palo and a team of graduate students to develop the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) for the QB50 CubeSat. “The quality of the science results garnered from the mass spectrometer on QB50 is directly related to the performance of the ADCS system,” says Palo. If all goes well, Rainville will get to see his ADCS system in action when the QB50 constellation launches in 2016.

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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“I really enjoy the science

and remote sensing

aspects of aerospace

engineering,” says Rainville,

“but I also wanted to get

into the details of building

electronics and hardware.”

Doctoral student Nick Rainville (right) and Professor Scott Palo (left) adjust the antenna connected

to the ground control system used for communicating with CubeSats. For the QB50 project, a

mass spectrometer will measure the composition of the atmosphere the CubeSats fly through.

Associate Professor James Nabity (left) and graduate student Jordan Holquist (right) are

develop-ing an environmental control chamber to decompose carbon dioxide to oxygen. Leftover carbon

monoxide could be used as a propellant.

DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGIES TO MAKE OXYGEN

FOR SPACEFLIGHTS

Managing breathable air on human spaceflights is no small feat.

Associate Professor James Nabity and Jordan Holquist (MS Aero ’14), research assistant and doctoral candidate, are studying new technologies to remove carbon dioxide and trace contaminants from the air, and then replenishing the clean air with oxygen to maintain a breathable atmosphere.

“The hope is to close the cycle,” says Nabity, “to be able to recycle carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen: the ingredients for life.”

One of their areas of interest is CO₂capture and its electrochemical reduction to carbon monoxide and oxygen. The oxygen would be recovered to revitalize the atmosphere while the carbon monoxide can be used as a propellant or an additional source of oxygen. Student-led graduate project teams are developing test rigs for atmosphere management and environmental control that will support NASA- and industry-funded research of Environ-mental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) technologies.

“I came to CU,” says Holquist, “because the aerospace program is one of the few with a focus on bioastronautics: the study and support of life in space. There is no other program that offers so many opportunities for hands-on experience with the variety of aerospace activities that CU-Boulder has.”

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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“The hope is to close

the cycle,” says Nabity,

“to be able to recycle

carbon, hydrogen,

oxygen and nitrogen:

the ingredients for life.”

BRIDGING DISCIPLINES TO MAKE UNMANNED

AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS SMARTER

CU-Boulder has one of the most comprehensive Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) programs in the nation, says Associate Professor Eric Frew, who directs CU’s Research and

Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, or RECUV.

That reputation drew graduate student Anthony Carfang to CU-Boulder, where he is working on data ferrying. In particular, he is looking at efficient ways to optimize UAS by controlling the aircraft’s trajectory to enhance communication with other vehicles and sensors. “Data ferrying specifically focuses on enabling communication throughout such environments,” says Frew.

Developing intelligent UAS requires multidisciplinary approaches, combining aspects of aerospace engineering, information science and computer science, for example.

The overarching theme of their work—autonomy for information gathering—splits into two areas. One is reasoning to improve the communication process between unmanned aircraft. The other area is developing intelligence for persistent atmospheric sampling and surveil-lance, particularly by exploiting wind energy.

“We may have more experience flying science missions with UAS than any other research group in the world,” says Frew. “That’s the key distinguishing feature of our center—we are out there flying.”

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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“RECUV focuses on

developing UAS autonomy

that allows these systems

to be responsive to a

complicated, uncertain

environment,” says

Carfang.

Professor Eric Frew (left) and graduate student Anthony Carfang (right) are developing Unmanned

Aircraft Systems that communicate with sensors and other vehicles. Their research also focuses

on harnessing wind energy to power the UAS and its data collection.

Using Professor Kristine Larson’s (left) groundbreaking research on GPS analysis techniques,

Nick Pedatella (right) studied how global weather patterns influence the Earth’s atmosphere.

USING GPS TO TRACK ATMOSPHERIC WEATHER

Many Americans use Global Positioning System (GPS) signals every day to navigate their car or to find their location on a smart phone. Now, AES researchers are discovering new and unusual ways to use these same GPS signals to understand the Earth’s environment. Professor Kristine Larson’s research group has pioneered the use of GPS for an incredible diversity of science applications, including measuring plate tectonic movements, soil mois-ture content, snow depth, sea level, vegetation growth and most recently, detecting ash in volcanic plumes.

Nick Pedatella (PhD, Aero ’11) came to CU-Boulder specifically to work with Larson on GPS engineering research.

“We have a really strong atmospheric sciences area that allows students to immediately apply their engineering work to science problems,” says Larson. “Nick exemplifies an ability to work with both engineering and sciences to do state-of-the-art GPS projects.”

Using GPS to study the ionosphere, Pedatella looked at altitudes above the 800-kilometer satellite orbital altitude, which is well above the 300-kilometer altitude of the maximum elec-tron density of the ionosphere. His research showed that the influence of large-scale global atmospheric weather patterns on the upper atmosphere extends to altitudes in excess of 1,000 kilometers.

“I had opportunities here that I might not have received in a more traditional aerospace engineering department,” says Pedatella, who is currently a remote sensing/space weather project scientist in the COSMIC Program Office at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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“Nick exemplifies an

ability to work with both

engineering and sciences

to do state-of-the-art

GPS projects,” says

Larson. “We have a

really strong atmospheric

sciences area that allows

students to do both.”

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

Graduate Programs

Ranked among the top four schools in the countryby the National Research Council and among the top ten by U.S. News & World Report, CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is internationally recognized for its research and education leadership in aerospace engineering, Earth and space sciences. Research teams in AES are making fundamental research contributions in bioastronautics, space weather, severe storms, space situational and environmental awareness, small satellite technologies, unmanned aircraft systems and aeronautical design optimization for performance.

Graduate Areas of Study

Bioastronautics

spans the study and

support of life in space, encompassing biological, behavioral and medical aspects governing humans and other living organ-isms in a space flight environment. Researchers conduct experiments aboard the ISS, collaborate on the design of com-mercial spacecraft and develop systems to enable future exploration missions.

Astrodynamics and Satellite

Navigation Systems

offers an extensive

curriculum and unique research opportuni-ties in satellite mission design, navigation, orbit estimation, attitude dynamics and control, GNSS technology and applications. Current activities include theoretical ad-vancements in trajectory design, innovations in small satellite design and improvements in space situational awareness.

Aerospace Engineering Systems

encompasses the core engineering disciplinary areas of fluids, structures and automatic con-trols, with course work in fundamental theory and computational methods to support a wide range of aerospace applications including multi-physics modeling and optimization of aerodynamic systems, development of novel materials and the design of unmanned aircraft platforms and integrated systems.

Remote Sensing, Earth and Space

Sciences

develops active and passive

remote sensing technologies and studies geoscience covering the oceans, solid Earth, atmospheres and space. This area bridges engineering and science by providing students with a unique experience and a skill set that prepares them for future opportunities in this expanding field.

Graduate students in the AES department may focus their studies in one of four areas:

Research Opportunities

The Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences has a vibrant research program that spans the four areas of focus and en-gages faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduate students. AES researchers garnered $16.7 million in research awards in 2013 and $21.8 million in 2012, and the CU-Boulder campus as a whole is the number one public university recipient of NASA awards. Diverse research opportunities for students abound in multi-disciplinary centers, individual faculty labs, campus research institutes and through partnerships with national research labs in the Boulder area.

Research Centers

• BioServe Space Technologies (BioServe) • Colorado Center for Astrodynamics

Research (CCAR)

• Center for Aerospace Structures (CAS) • Research and Engineering Center for

Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) Many of our researchers collaborate in four research centers where groundbreaking, multidisciplinary research is conducted to address critical aerospace challenges. These research centers are:

Smead Fellows

The H. Joseph Smead Graduate Student Fellowshipswere established in 2006 to honor the memory of Dr. Harold J. “Joe” Smead (1925–2003), who graduated from CU-Boulder in 1946 with a bachelor’s de-gree in electrical engineering. For his many extraordinary professional accomplishments and strong volunteer commitment to CU

Engineering, Joe was awarded the College of Engineering and Applied Science Distin-guished Engineering Alumnus Award. The prestigious Smead Student Fellowships provide support and educational enrichment opportunities for students who demonstrate exceptional merit in the academic, commu-nity and professional arenas.

Student Groups

AES graduate students have formed the Aerospace Graduate Student Organization (AGSO). It exists to enhance relationships among AES graduate students, faculty, department officials, industry and the local community. It also serves to strengthen the sense of community and promote interaction among AES graduate students. In addition to the AGSO, there are a dozen other

aerospace- and engineering-related student organizations in which graduate students can participate.

For more detailed information about AES grad-uate programs, focus areas, research centers, admissions, financial aid, Smead Fellowships and many other topics, please visit our website at www.colorado.edu/aerospace.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

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GRADUATE PROJECTS

Demand from graduate students for the same hands-on learning that they saw undergradu-ates enjoying gave birth to the AES graduate projects course. Faculty members collaborate with industry partners to develop interesting real-world engineering problems for students to solve. As a result, graduate students learn project management and systems engineering processes and experience the full project cycle of requirements definition, design, manufacturing, integration and testing. Senior instructor Joe Tanner coordinates the graduate projects. As a former NASA astronaut who flew four missions, he brings unique real-world experience to the course. A long-running and highly successful gradu-ate project theme involves a series of Cube-Sat projects that have developed into high-profile products showcasing the work of graduate students.

The first CubeSat project was the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it launched in 2012 and is still in orbit meas-uring high-energy particles in the polar regions of the Earth’s atmosphere. This stu-dent-built CubeSat was a joint effort of AES and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and

Space Physics (LASP) to study space weather in a near-Earth orbit.

Next in the CubeSat series was a NASA-funded satellite designed and built by AES students to better understand solar flares erupting from the sun’s surface. The $1 million Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) CubeSat, developed with the guidance of AES faculty and LASP engineers, was selected by NASA for launch in January 2015.

Currently, AES students are building a Cube-Sat as part of the QB50 program, a Euro-pean effort led by the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium with a goal of launching 50 CubeSats on a single rocket. In another project, LifeLab, students are devel-oping an advanced Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) facility that will be used to test life support for space habitats and space vehicles. Once LifeLab is completed, CU-Boulder will be one of only a few universities in the world with this capability. “Our students are prepared for the kind of project work they’ll be doing in industry,” Tanner says, “well above and beyond students who have not taken our projects course.”

Erin Overcash (BS AeroEngr ’14) represents her country wearing two uniforms: as a U.S. naval officer and as a USA Rugby Eagle. Overcash first chose CU-Boulder because of its premier undergraduate aerospace engi-neering program and the ROTC program on campus. In her sophomore year at CU she discovered a passion for rugby, in part because of the camaraderie of her team-mates. Her athletic abilities earned her a spot on the Women’s National 15s Team in Canada in 2014.

Overcash is now at the Olympic Training Center under Navy orders for the World Class Athlete Program, training for the USA Women’s National 7s Team. To earn her master’s degree in aerospace, she enrolled

in the CU-Boulder Engineering Anywhere program, which allows her to continue training and competing out of state for the 2016 Olympics. Her long-term goal is to become a naval aviator.

“I will miss Boulder, CU and the

close relationships I’ve developed

with the faculty and staff in the

aerospace department,” says

Overcash. “I am proud to

repre-sent the Buffs in all of my future

endeavors and will always be

indebted to this department

for such a wonderful education.”

AES STUDENT HAS OLYMPIC DREAMS

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

AES FACULTY BRING REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE

Research Profes-sor Delores Knipp’s face lights up when-ever she has a chance to talk about space weather—luckily for the students in AES, that hap-pens on a daily basis. Knipp, who came to CU from the Air Force Academy, where she was an award-winning professor, has been teaching a graduate-level AES course on the aerospace environment for five years. “Teaching beginning graduate students at AES about the wonders of the space environment and space weather is highly rewarding,” says Knipp.

Knipp has more than three decades of research and teaching experience in meteor-ology, and the physics of the upper atmos-phere and geospace environment. In fact, she’s literally written the book on it. Her

textbook, Understanding Space Weather and the Physics Behind It, is the most comprehensive introduction to space physics for students on the market. What really gets Knipp excited these days are the discoveries she and her graduate students are making by analyzing magnetic field measurements taken on board orbiting satellites. By mapping observations from a variety of altitudes and times to common magnetic field lines, they are able to deter-mine if the observations are properly cali-brated. These calibrated measurements will dramatically improve our understanding of disturbances in the space environment that can threaten satellite health, disrupt worldwide communications and impact satellite navigation systems like GPS.

“Our department’s integration

of aerospace engineering with

aerospace science is unique

and important,” says Knipp.

DELORES KNIPP

Jeff Parker’s (MS AeroEngr ’03, PhD AeroEngr ’07) desire to explore the solar system led him to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2008, where he successfully ap-plied to lunar orbiters and libration orbiters the Linked Autonomous Interplanetary Satellite Orbit Navigation (LiAISON) that was first developed at CU’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR). Four years later he returned to AES, where he is now an assistant professor.

The focus of Parker’s research is on innova-tive spacecraft mission design and navigation, including an understanding of everything that drives the motion of a spacecraft. Parker fo-cuses on low-energy trajectories, low-thrust

trajectory optimization and advanced concepts for robotic and crewed missions. The navigation side of his research works to track where the spacecraft actually is in space and how to get it to its destination. He leads research in this area to study how to harness HDTV signals for satellite navigation and how to optimize satellite-to-satellite LiAISON navigation.

“The work we do here is

important to humankind for

several reasons,” says Parker.

“It engages students to learn

science, math and engineering.

The technology that comes out

of space exploration is useful in

other areas as well. Humans have

an innate desire to explore the

cosmos.”

JEFF PARKER

Doctoral student Christine Fanchiang (MS Aero ’10) is fascinated with space. Not only does she hope to become an astronaut someday, but she also wants to help design and build future space habitats for the moon, Mars and beyond.

Fanchiang’s undergraduate degree is in aero-space engineering from MIT. She came to CU-Boulder for graduate studies after learn-ing about its exceptional bioastronautics pro-gram. The alignment of aerospace science and engineering with hands-on projects is providing Fanchiang with valuable and rele-vant experience as she studies the effects of spacecraft design on crew performance, new

technologies for bioregenerative life support systems and building planetary outposts. Fanchiang has received numerous awards while at CU including a NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Graduate Fellowship, an Achieve-ment Reward for College Scientists Scholar-ship, a Society of Women Engineers Rocky Mountain Section Pioneer Scholarship and a Colorado Chapter of the Philanthropic Educational Organization Scholar Award. Recently Fanchiang’s BioCube team won first place at the Startup Weekend Space in San Jose, California. Among ten competing teams, judges found BioCube’s conception of a line of cube satellites intended to help biologists study organic materials in space best exemplified “the development of outer-worldly ideation around ‘New Space’” the competition is meant to foster.

“I have so much access to all

the right people here,” she says.

“How could I not take advantage

of these opportunities that will

help me achieve my dreams?”

On May 22, Director Charles Elachi and CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to continue and broaden a rich tradition of collaboration on space and Earth-science efforts going back nearly 50 years.

CU-Boulder began its collaboration with JPL in the 1960s, and has been involved in roughly 40 sponsored research projects with JPL worth nearly $15 million between 2011 and 2013. The joint MOU is a product of the Strategic University Research Partnership, or SURP, which was established to encour-age and support relationships between JPL and the nation’s top space education and research universities.

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JET PROPULSION LABORATORY (JPL)

For Christine Fanchiang, the sky is not the limit

Farheen Rizvi (BS/MS, AeroEngr ’10), Guidance and Controls Engineer, Cassini Spacecraft Display

With a passion for space travel that began with astronaut wallpaper in his childhood room, it’s no surprise that Todd Mosher (MS AeroEngr ’95, PhD ’00) launched a career covering all aspects of the space program.

Mosher has participated in launch vehicle, Earth orbiting and planetary satellite, and human spaceflight programs while employed in industry, government and academia. He has worked at General Dynamics, The Aero-space Corporation and Lockheed Martin, while also teaching at the University of Califor-nia, Los Angeles and Utah State University. For the past eight years Mosher has worked for the Sierra Nevada Corporation focusing most recently on the Dream Chaser, a commercial space transportation system for transporting humans and cargo to and from the International Space Station. As the director of strategic opportunities, he has

led proposals to NASA as well as developed unique partnerships with the Walt Disney Corporation and Lucasfilm.

“CU has created an amazing

legacy and footprint in the space

industry,” says Mosher. “The

aerospace program provided a

great foundation that enabled

me to work on a variety of

spaceflight programs.”

Mosher’s favorite class at CU was Space-craft Design, originally taught by Charlie Brown and now taught by Mike McGrath, adjunct professor. Due to his expertise, Mosher was asked by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics to revise the textbook Elements of Spacecraft Design, something Mosher calls one of his greatest honors.

ALUMNUS TODD MOSHER TURNED A FASCINATION WITH

SPACE TRAVEL INTO A CAREER

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING GRADUATE RESEARCH

Laurren Kanner (BS AeroEngr ’05, MS AeroEngr ’08) credits the lunar lander model project she worked on with Professor David Klaus for helping launch her career in commercial aerospace.

After CU, Kanner worked as an operations engineer in the Direct Access program at DigitalGlobe in Longmont, whose product enables commercial and defense satellite imagery users in other countries to lease time on DigitalGlobe satellites.

In 2013, she went to Skybox Imaging—a startup recently bought by Google—to help develop a similar service providing real-time, high-resolution satellite imagery for Skybox. She also manages the imagery product line of satellite photos, such as

those seen in Google Earth or in the media. As a technical project manager, Kanner serves as the interface between internal engi-neers, system users and future customers.

“This is a really small and

exclu-sive niche market,” says Kanner.

“There are probably fewer than

a dozen people in the world

doing what I do.”

“The lunar lander project really set the stage for this by encouraging us to evaluate what had been done in the past, take what was good and find a modern way of solving the same problem with today’s technology,” she says.

ALUMNUS LAURREN KANNER FINDS NICHE SATELLITE

MARKET AN EXCITING CAREER

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For nearly 30 years, the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR) has been at the forefront of astrodynamics research and the integration of satellite applications with the study of geophysical processes. Established in 1985 as a key component of the university’s emphasis on space science, the multidisciplinary center brings together faculty, staff and students from the AES department to enhance understanding of the Earth and solar system through satellite missions and observations.

Professor George Born was instrumental in launching CCAR, serving as the center’s founding director.

“We’re a nontraditional aerospace depart-ment,” says Born, director emeritus of CCAR (pictured at right above, standing next to current CCAR director Jeff Thayer). “We have scientists and engineers so we not only can build a sensor, but we can also fly the sensor and analyze the data from it. We can do the whole package, and that makes us unique.”

The center began as an orbit emphasis research center and has grown to include remote sensing, space studies oceanogra-phy, meteorology, climatology, glaciology

and hydrology. More than 150 doctoral students have graduated through CCAR. With 32 faculty members, 70 graduate stu-dents and 20 undergraduates each semester, CCAR is one of the largest centers at CU-Boulder.

There are 120 CCAR projects in progress that are supported through NASA, NSF, DoD and industry. Many of these projects are con-ducted in collaboration with the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV), CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and industry partners. Projects range from building small satellites to an asteroid sampling mission. Exciting projects are also on the horizon with new CubeSats, new NASA missions and developments in innovative techniques.

“We have the ability to go after

big projects,” says Professor Jeff

Thayer, CCAR director. “Having a

lot of people involved in a variety

of projects helps the longevity of

a center like this.”

COLORADO CENTER FOR ASTRODYNAMICS RESEARCH

A PROVEN LEADER

JEFF THAYER AND GEORGE BORN

INDIVIDUAL

GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS 2013–14

• 11 NSF graduate student fellows • 13 NASA graduate student fellows • 4 NDSEG (National Defense Science

and Engineering graduate) graduate student fellows

• 1 Goldwater graduate student fellow • 1 Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial

Scholarship

• 2 Los Alamos National Laboratory Vela Fellowships

• Hyperion Green Aircraft, “Best Paper Award,” AIAA Design Engineering Technical • NASA X-Hab Team, “First-Place

Graduates” and “Best Advanced

Concepts” at NASA RASC-AL competition

TEAM

The “Twenty20s” national awards honor the academic achievements and leadership of top

engineering, math, science and technology students. Award winners in 2013 are (back row, from

left to right) Kirstyn Johnson, Erin Griggs, Dan Lubey, Paul Anderson and Brad Cheetham. (Front row,

from left to right) Mike Lotto and Jake Gamsky.

• 2013: Seven of the 20 students honored by Aviation Week/Raytheon’s awards program “Tomorrow’s Engineering Leaders” (Twenty20) are CU-Boulder Aerospace Engineering Sciences students • 2014: Three of the 20 students honored

as “Tomorrow’s Engineering Leaders” (Twenty20s) are CU-Boulder Aerospace Engineering Sciences students

• Mars Approach Vehicle and Earth Return for Interplanetary Crew (MAVERIC)

Second place, International Mars Society Convention in League City, Texas, NASA Johnson Space Center.

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