Six students earn NASA Space and Technology Research Fellowships – University of Colorado Boulder

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Master’s and PhD students in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences are being recognized for earning 2019 NASA Space and Technology Research Fellowships (NSTRF).
The program which sponsors U.S. citizen and permanent resident graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration and economic future. Awards are made in the form of training grants to universities on behalf of individuals pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees, with the student’s faculty advisor serving as the principal investigator.
In addition to their faculty advisor, each awarded student is matched with a technically relevant and community-engaged NASA Subject Matter Expert, who will serve as the their research collaborator. The research collaborator will serve as the conduit into the larger technical community corresponding to the student’s space technology research area.
Six CU Boulder aerospace students are receiving the awards:

Read below for more information about each of their research efforts.
Advisor: Bobby Braun
Lab: Entry systems Design Laboratory (EsDL)
Sam’s research focuses on developing AeroDrop, a dual aerocapture-entry architecture for multiple spacecraft missions. AeroDrop consists of two spacecraft. The spacecraft travel together during the cruise phase, and have the same approach trajectory. Upon entry, one spacecraft performs aerocapture, and the other lands via direct atmospheric entry. This method has potential benefits for mass, risk, and engineering and operational complexity for missions delivering orbiters and/or landers to other planets or back to Earth from deep space.
Advisor:  Dan Scheeres
Lab: Celestial Spaceflight Mechanics Laboratory (CSML)
The goal of my research is to utilize fancy dynamics to develop generalized approaches for designing multi-spacecraft missions.  Modern formation flying concepts such as virtual telescope structures or asteroid deflection strategies are highly sensitive to orbit dynamics.  Devising formations with simplified models would be detrimental to the mission’s success as spacecraft would need to expend significant amounts of fuel to not drift apart.  This prohibits the use of a common formation design strategy when examining different dynamical systems such as orbits around the moon, Earth or Mars.  My research will extract similarities from these systems by examining manifolds (fancy dynamics) prevalent in almost all space environments.  Then, we will develop design and control strategies exploiting these parallels.  By the end of my PhD, I hope to have developed a uniform theory for controlling and designing formations applicable to all known space systems.
Advisor: Robert A Marshall
Lab: The LAIR – Lightning, Atmosphere, Ionosphere and Radiation Belts Group 
My research proposal is the development of an instrument to measure magnetic fields in space. The instrument will consist of a miniaturized optical magnetometer designed to take scalar and vector measurements, an attitude determination system, and an optical bench that will serve as the integration platform for the instrument. An optical magnetometer utilizes the effect that magnetic fields have on the magnetic spin of atoms to accurately and precisely measure the magnetic field present.  
The system will be built and tested for accuracy, precision, reliability and the ability to survive in space. In order to achieve this goal, it will include the adaptation of an existing miniaturized optical magnetometer to have vector measuring capabilities. The existing magnetometer has been and is being developed by Professor Svenja Knappe in the mechanical engineering department at CU Boulder. The vectorization adaptation will include mechanical changes as well as changes in the electronics and software of the system to accommodate the additional information the instrument will provide.
Advisor: Natasha Bosanac
Lab: Bosanac Group
The main goal of my research is to develop algorithms that will enable rapid and intuitive trajectory design in multi-body systems. Both robotic and human spacecraft are more frequently operating in chaotic regimes where the two-body problem is not sufficient for trajectory design. Therefore, I am investigating the use of clustering algorithms to uncover a multi-body system’s fundamental building blocks, or motion primitives, to be used in the trajectory design process. These motion primitives can be considered analogous to the conic sections used in traditional two-body trajectory design. In conjunction with developing these building blocks, I am investigating how to effectively leverage them to construct initial trajectories for future missions. The primary application of my research will be its utility in the mission concept development process and contingency planning in time-critical operational environments.
Advisor: Natasha Bosanac
Lab: Bosanac Group
I am passionate about using advancements in astrodynamics and machine learning to enable new architectures and classes of space missions, increasing our scientific understanding, demonstrating new technology, and exploring the unknown. Missions operating in chaotic, multi-body environments, such as the Earth-Moon and Sun-Earth systems, have long been at the forefront of NASA’s goal to better humanity’s understanding of the solar system. However, trajectory design for these missions are inhibited by the high dimensionality that is inherent to the trajectory design process. This high dimensionality prohibits a thorough exploration of the design space, and necessarily constrains the design process to only examining a limited number of mission architectures. To enhance the design space exploration and uncover solutions that would further enable missions in multi-body gravitational environments, advancements in machine learning can be utilized to explore the global trajectory design space. My research focuses on applying dynamical systems theory and machine learning techniques to multi-body systems, leveraging free transport mechanisms where possible, to design complex and innovative trajectories within these systems to enhance current mission capabilities and advance our understanding of the solar system. 
Advisor: James Nabity
U.S. Space Exploration Policy specifies the critical importance of establishing an outpost on the Moon to provide the foundation for human missions to Mars and beyond. However, launching every spare part and system required for long-duration deep space missions is cost prohibitive. The key to any sustainable presence in space is the ability to utilize in situ (on site) resources for the manufacture and replacement of consumables on demand. Thus, a development essential to sustained Lunar or Martian occupancy is the capability to extract metals, oxygen, and water from regolith.
Ionic liquids (ILs) are diverse set of organic salts that are liquid at room temperature and poses a variety of useful properties. When ILs are mixed with acids they can dissolve the stable oxides composing Lunar regolith at temperatures below 200°C. My research is to develop a breadboard electrochemical process that uses target-metal electrodes and acidic ILs to selectively extract high purity, single element metals from regolith simulant. Additionally, computational chemistry and experimentation will be used to identify task specific ILs with functional groups targeted at improved performance dissolving titanium, aluminum, and silicon oxides.
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