Project Description

Future missions are targeted increasingly in the cislunar realm, the space between the Earth and the Moon. Latest developments are pushing towards smaller, more agile spacecraft of the CubeSat and NanoSat size scale, which are more cost-efficient and robust compared to one large spacecraft with a single point of failure. The cislunar space itself poses among others two challenges: A very demanding dynamical environment and large distances to Earth. This creates the need for advanced orbital methods for mission planning, surveillance, interception, and collision avoidance. The large distances at the same time demand a high level of independence and autonomy. In this project, artificial intelligence swarm methods are utilized for an intercept mission scenario in cislunar space situational awareness using a satellite swarm mission configuration. It fuses autonomous swarm control, cislunar dynamics, and space situational awareness for the near future use case of the lunar platform, on-orbit servicing, collision avoidance, and independent information collection.  

Start Date

12/1/2020

Postdoc Qualifications

PhD in either Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related fields.  

Co-Advisors

Avinash Kak (ECE),

Carolin Frueh (AAE),

Kathleen Howell (AAE).

References

Sonali Patil, Bharath Comandur, Tanmay Prakash, and Avinash C. Kak "A New Stereo Benchmarking Dataset for Satellite Images," arXiv:1907.04404, 2019.

B. Little, C. Frueh, SSA Sensor Tasking: Comparison of Machine Learning with Classical Optimization Methods, Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, https://doi.org/10.2514/1.G004279

A. Friedman, C. Frueh, Determining Characteristics of Artificial Near-Earth Objects Using Observability Analysis, Acta Astronautica, Vol. 144, pp. 405-421, doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.12.028, 2018
Das-Stuart, A., Howell, K. C., and Folta, D. C., "Rapid Trajectory Design in Complex Environments Enabled by Reinforcement Learning and Graph Search Strategies," Acta Astronautica, Vol. 171, June 2020, pg. 172--195, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.04.037.

Cox, A. D. , Howell, K. C., and Folta, D. C., "Trajectory Design Leveraging Low-Thrust, Multi-Body Equilibria and their Manifolds," Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, Vol. 67, Issue 3, April 2020, pg. 977--1001, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40295-020-00211-6.

Somrita Chattopadhyay, Constantine J. Roros, Avinash C. Kak "A Collaborative Algorithmic Framework to Track Objects and Events," IEEE 26th International Conference on Image Processing, Taipei, Taiwan, 2019.