SIOS Laboratory grad student Colby Merrill and recent SIOSlab graduate Dr. Jackson Kulik presented their research at the Astrodynamics Specialist Conference in Broomfield, CO. Colby presented research on creating new periodic trajectories in the Cislunar environment. Jackson presented research on comparing relative reachable sets around some spacecraft state.
Congratulations to Colby Merrill on Passing their A Exam
Colby Merrill successfully passed their A exam on 7/30/2024, marking the entrance into the dissertation phase of their degree program. A recording of their talk can be viewed below.
Congratulations to Dr. Oliver!
On July 25th, 2024 Rachel Oliver successfully defended her B exam, completing the requirements for her PhD program. You can see a recording of her talk below.
Congratulations to Sachin Kelkar!
Sachin Kelkar successfully defended his M exam, completing the requirements for his master’s degree. You can see his presentation below.
Congratulations to Dr. Kulik!
On May 7, 2024 Jackson Kulik successfully defended his B exam, completing the requirements for his PhD program. You can see a recording of his talk below.
We Found the Dynamical Age of Selam
Selam (pictured below) is the strange secondary of the Dinkinesh binary asteroid system in the main-belt. Using the secular theory based on binary-Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (BYORP) and tides, we were able to constrain the age of this asteroid to 1-10 million years. Read up on the methods and results in the article in Astronomy & Astrophysics published here. As a part of this work, we derived some really interesting equations as well which include an improved tidal-BYORP equilibrium equation and a condition for YORP stability.
Acta Astronautica Article Published!
Colby Merrill (2nd year PhD student) just published their first journal article! In their first year at Cornell, they produced a mission design to create a contact binary asteroid and observe its formation process. They presented the first iteration of this work at JHU/APL and a further iteration at the 8th International Planetary Defense Conference. The paper is titled “Creating a contact binary via spacecraft impact to near-Earth binary asteroid (350751) 2002 AW” and features contributions from ASTRAlab members Carl Geiger and Abu Tahsin, SIOSlab PI Dmitry Savransky, and SSDS PI Mason Peck. Access the full publication here.
SIOS at oSTEM 2023!
SIOS Laboratory grad student Colby Merrill presented their research at the 13th oSTEM (out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Conference in Anaheim, CA. The poster they presented focused on designing the orbits necessary to successfully demonstrate a gravity tractor technology.
On Cython
Following up on our ‘compiling Python’ session, we recently did a quick tutorial on Cython. The materials for the tutorial are located here: https://github.com/dsavransky/cython_demo and you can watch the recording, below.
We’re Not Slacking Off, We’re Compiling Python
At a recent group meeting, we discussed how to compile the Python/OpenBLAS/Numpy toolchain from scratch (and why you might wish to do such a thing). See the recording, below, and the associated notes here: https://gist.github.com/dsavransky/a0e15fb3cf2dc40fbed9db1d2b481deb