Mason Peck, Cornell University

Microscale Spacecraft

There is untapped potential for transformative spacecraft missions that use very small, agile satellites. This talk considers the mission-performance benefits and systems-engineering challenges of small length scale from the perspective of fundamental flight dynamics. Violet is a 50 kg agile spacecraft with ultraviolet spectrometer being developed by faculty and students in the departments of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Astronomy at Cornell. Dr. Peck will describe Violet's objectives and system architecture as a case study of this principle. He also proposes an extension of this scaling principle: spacecraft consisting of little more material than found in a typical integrated-circuit chip. His group recently launched prototypes of these chip-satellites. The dynamics of the very small can be used to realize propulsion with minimal advancements in technology, specifically the use of the Lorentz force that acts on electrically charged spacecraft traveling through planetary and stellar magnetospheres. Cornell's Joe Burns, among others, have used Cassini and Voyager imagery to show that this interaction is responsible for some of the resonances in the orbital dynamics of dust in Jupiter's and Saturn's rings. The Lorentz force turns out to vary in inverse proportion to the square of this characteristic length scale, making it an even more effective means of propelling tiny spacecraft than solar sailing.

Bio: Mason Peck is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA and a M.A. in English Literature from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on spacecraft dynamics and control. He also teaches in Cornell's Systems Engineering program. He is an author of 25 refereed journal articles, 51 reviewed conference papers, and 17 patents in the U.S. and the E.U. He has spent 15 years as an engineer and consultant in the aerospace industry, working with organizations that include Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, and Goodrich. Some recent research projects include the CUSat in-orbit inspection technology demo, a satellite built at Cornell and expected to launch through AFRL's University Nanosatellite Program; spacecraft dynamics and control at the microscale, a study of microchip-size spacecraft; and gyroscopic robotics, a study of robotic actuation through workless constraint torques that has been demonstrated on NASA microgravity flights.

Host:  Joe Burns & Richard Lovelace