Friday, Sept. 13
10:40 a.m. - Seminar in AERO 120
11:30 a.m. - Panel Discussion / Q&A in AERO 111

This seminar will recount the two-year proximity operations and remote sensing campaign at Bennu, including the dramatic sample collection event and the events leading to the landing of the sample capsule in Utah.

A panel discussion will follow, featuring members of the Navigation and Flight Operations Team from NASA Goddard, Lockheed Martin, and KinetX, who will each recount specific challenges faced during the mission and the innovations that were implemented to overcome them.

Featured Speakers:

Dr. Michael C Moreau (AeroEngr MS’97, PhD’01) has worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since 2001, and for over 10 years has served in leadership roles on the OSIRIS-REx Mission, as the manager of the Navigation Team during development, launch, and Bennu encounter, then as deputy project manager and leader of the sample return capsule recovery team. Mike’s Ph.D. research at CU focused on applications of the Global Positioning System in high Earth orbits, and contributed to the adoption of GPS on NASA missions such as GOES and Magnetosphere Multiscale. Before attending CU, he earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Vermont.

Over three decades, Dr. Peter Antreasian (AeroEngr PhD’92) has made contributions to the navigation of NASA missions, Galileo, NEAR, Mars Odyssey, MER, Cassini-Huygens, GRAIL, and OSIRIS-REx. He began his career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1992, then joined KinetX 20 years later to lead the OSIRIS-REx navigation team. His expertise in orbit determination and navigation has been crucial in the success of these missions, including the first-ever landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid and the return of an asteroid sample to Earth. Peter earned his BS, MS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering, respectively, from Purdue, University of Texas and University of Colorado.

Dr. Jason Leonard (AeroEngr MS’12, PhD’15) received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the 91������ under the advisement of Dr. George Born. Currently, he is the Orbit Determination Group Supervisor at KinetX Aerospace and Deputy Navigation Team Chief for the NASA OSIRIS-REx and OSIRIS-APEX missions. He has been the Orbit Determination Team Lead for OSIRIS-REx since prior to Launch, during the duration of proximity operations and its successful acquisition of asteroid regolith, and through its return of the sample to Earth. For his contributions to the mission, Jason received the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal and the PI Award of Distinction.

Dr. Daniel Wibben is the Maneuver Design Group Supervisor for the Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics practice at KinetX Aerospace, Inc. Since joining the company, he has held the role of Maneuver and Trajectory lead for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. He has also been involved with the planning and operations of the LUCY, LunaH-Map, and DAVINCI missions. He received his B.S. in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona where his research was focused on nonlinear guidance techniques for asteroid proximity operations and planetary landing.

Coralie D. Adam (AeroEngr MS’17) is the Optical Navigation Group Supervisor at KinetX. She holds a B.S. in aerospace engineering and astronomy from the University of Illinois, and an M.S. in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado at 91������. During her 12 years at KinetX, Coralie has had lead roles on the navigation teams for NASA’s New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and OSIRIS-APEX missions. In addition to leading the OSIRIS-REx optical navigation subsystem from development through sample collection, she co-convened the scientific investigation of Bennu’s active particle ejection phenomena. Coralie is currently the deputy Navigation Team Chief on NASA’s Lucy mission, and a navigation lead and science co-investigator on the OSIRIS-APEX extended mission to asteroid Apophis.

Ryan Olds (AeroEngr BS’04, MS’09) has 19 years of experience in Guidance Navigation and Controls at Lockheed Martin Space supporting NASA Deep Space Exploration Missions.  Ryan started his career working on the Pointing Control System for the Spitzer Space Telescope.  He developed the reaction wheel control system for the twin-spacecraft GRAIL mission and supported test, integration, launch, and operations at the Moon.  Ryan began working on OSIRIS-Rex in 2013 by developing control systems as well as the Natural Feature Tracking system which provided autonomous navigation for OSIRIS-REx during the mission’s sample acquisition phase.  Ryan is currently a Guidance, Navigation and Controls manager and continues to support Deep Space Exploration missions such as OSIRIS-REx and DAVINCI.

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Sherman Lo
Senior Research Engineer, Stanford GPS Laboratory
Friday, Mar. 7 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: GPS and other global satellite navigation systems (GNSSs) has become integral to our society in both obvious and subtle ways. We knowingly rely on it every day for mapping or ride sharing. We unknowingly use it when we watch a video on our smartphone, we turn on the lights or make a stock purchase as it provides timing to important infrastructure. When we fly, GNSS is critical to many systems onboard our plane. It has profoundly changed our society. But it can do more and we are still developing ways to using it more effectively or for more applications. One place GNSS has not been used a lot is in the oceans - that is starting to change. We are developing technology using GNSS and satellite communications that will provide greater awareness of the oceans by tracking marine life and alerting us with their position should they be poached. We called this the Fin Alert Shark Tag (FAST).

Apex marine fish such as shark and tuna are key to the health of the ocean ecosystem.  However, they are also highly prized and valuable. So they are common targets for poaching and illegal fishing. The initial goal of FAST is to develop a tag for these protected marine species which will alerts us immediately with their positions should they be caught. As such, it must operate practically anywhere on the surface of the earth, survive the challenges of being on marine life and provide location information quickly. These three challenges means that we must have a 24/7 communications link anywhere on earth (Iridium is used), it must be able to survive pressures of up to 200 times that of atmospheric pressure at sea level (2000 m depth) and must provide GNSS positions with only a few seconds of observations. Furthermore, these tags need to be small, low profile, low power and low costs - in other words, low SWaPC.

This talk will discuss the marine poaching problem and cover the key pain points to a marine anti-poaching tag that FAST is solving. It will discuss the testing and prototyping conducted on the tag. It shows field test results of the tag on elephant seals – which ended up being the most precise long-term tracking that has been done on this species. We will cover how the technology is not only useful for marine anti-poaching but for many other maritime applications such as retrieval of lost equipment (AUV, fishing nets, lobster pots, etc.). These assets are costly to lose both economically and because they can harm marine life. FAST is essentially an airtag for protecting the ocean.

Bio: Sherman Lo is a senior research engineer at the Stanford GPS Laboratory. He also is executive director of the Stanford Center for Position Navigation and Time (SCPNT) and a Stanford instructor. His research work focuses on navigation safety, security and robustness. At Stanford, he was Associate Investigator for the FAA evaluation of enhanced Loran and alternative position navigation and timing (APNT) systems for aviation. He currently leads work examining GNSS resiliency, interference and spoofing detection and mitigation. He has over 170 conference, 30 journal, 19 magazine publications and 10 issued US patents. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Navigation (ION) and just finished his term as its president.

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Harsh Bhundiya
PhD candidate, MIT Aerospace Materials and Structures Laboratory
Wednesday, Mar. 5 | 9:30 a.m. | AERO 111

Abstract: Modern deployable space structures have enabled spectacular missions like the James Webb Space Telescope, but they are constrained by fairing size and by a tradeoff between deployed size and structural precision that limits their use for future communications and astronomy applications. In-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM), or the robotic construction of structures in space, offers a promising solution to overcome these issues and enable novel spacecraft architectures on orbit and on planetary surfaces. Structures constructed in space can achieve higher packaging ratios and be optimized for loads on orbit; however, current ISAM concepts are hindered by inefficient manufacturing processes with high power requirements and challenges in the coupled design of spacecraft and fabricated structures. In this talk, I present my work addressing these issues to enable energy-efficient, rapid ISAM of large space structures. I first discuss designing manufacturing processes for space, using a quantitative framework for material and process selection that considers the important metrics of thermal stability, energy consumption, and accuracy. This analysis suggests deformation processes are well-suited for ISAM, due to an order of magnitude lower energy consumption than other candidate processes. Next, I discuss the design of ISAM spacecraft through an analysis of fabrication time, considering constraints such as power, attitude control authority, and avoidance of control-structure interactions. This analysis shows how attitude control authority is the most dominant constraint on fabrication time of large-diameter structures and the importance of using multiple spacecraft to decrease fabrication time. Finally, I synthesize my results with an exemplary ISAM process, termed Bend-Forming, which can efficiently form truss structures from metallic feedstock. I highlight its application for constructing large reflector antennas and ongoing efforts to understand attitude control during fabrication, paving the way for a future space demonstration. 

Bio: Harsh Bhundiya is a PhD candidate in the MIT Aerospace Materials and Structures Laboratory. His research interests lie in spacecraft structures, deployable structures, and space robotics. He currently researches the deformation processing of large truss support structures and the design of spacecraft for in-space assembly and manufacturing. Prior to his PhD, he completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech in 2020 and a M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2022. He received the 2022 AIAA Spacecraft Structures Best Paper Award and is a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow. 

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A Future Insight Seminar and Book Signing
Dan Caruso
Author:
Tuesday, March 11 | 4 P.M. | AERO N240

The first 50 attendees will receive a free signed Bandwidth book.

No one knows the birth of the Internet, and the establishment of mobile communications and fiber optic networks better than Dan Caruso, one of the changemakers who largely shaped the modern communications age. At the dawn of the digital revolution, he was about to embark on an adventure that would not only impact the course of his life for decades to come, but permanently change the very essence of how people relate to each other on a daily basis. For the first time, Caruso pulls back the curtain in Bandwidth, a no-holds-barred memoir that celebrates the pioneers who invented the Internet’s early backbones, the renegades who lit the fiber revolution, the antics that caused it to all come crashing down, and the new wave of entrepreneurs who rose the industry back from its ashes.  For more information on Bandwidth please go to: 

Dan Caruso, is a fierce business leader known for his extraordinary track record of success in the telecommunications, aerospace and technologies industries.  As founder and CEO of Zayo Group, Caruso led the company to a $14.3 billion exit, delivering exceptional returns for investors. His career highlights include co-founding executive roles at Level 3 Communications and leadership positions at Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS), both achieving multi-billion-dollar enterprise values. Caruso also spearheaded the 2004 take-private of ICG Communications, achieving a remarkable 25x return.  In 2020, he founded Caruso Ventures, a prominent investment firm focusing on quantum technology, space tech, and other Colorado scaleups. A three-time “Decacorn” entrepreneur, his expertise is shared with aspiring innovators through numerous organizations, including Endeavor Global, Elevate Quantum, and the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Caruso holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois. His numerous accolades include the Colorado Technology Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Colorado Governor’s Corporate Citizenship Medal. In 2015, Dan and his wife, Cindy, established The Caruso Foundation to Support Initiatives that Inspire Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Inclusion. The Caruso Foundation supports a number of impactful organizations including the 91������’s Startup Summer, Catalyze CU, and New Venture Challenge, Endeavor Colorado, Colorado Thrives and several others. Dan recently gave the commencement address for the 91������ MBA (2020).

Mark N. Sirangelo created and hosts the CU Future Insight Seminar Series as CU’s Entrepreneur-Scholar in Residence. He is a previous Chairman of the U.S. Dept. of Defense’s Defense Innovation Board and the DoD’s Space Advisory Committee. Mark was the founding executive and head of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems and has served as the Chief Innovation Officer of Colorado.

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Zhiyu Zhang
Postdoctoral Fellow, Electrical Engineering, Harvard University
Wednesday, Feb. 26 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: Despite the advancements of autonomous systems from decades of engineering, there is always the need to make them even more efficient and reliable. Machine learning holds great potential to achieve this goal, as it can leverage computation and data on an unprecedented scale. An important challenge is thus synergizing these two separate areas, which requires fundamental algorithmic innovations due to the high stakes of interacting with the physical world.

In this talk, I will describe my unique approach to tackle this challenge, specifically from the perspective of adaptive online optimization. This is a major research topic within theoretical machine learning, but my talk will focus on its engineering implications tailored to autonomous systems. The central question is the following: given a “black box” machine learning module, how can we use principled insights from adaptive online learning to improve its efficiency and reliability?

My talk will answer this question in two concrete problems. First, based on [arxiv:2402.02720] (ICML’24) and [arxiv:2410.02561] (in submission), I will demonstrate how to sequentially build trustworthy confidence set predictions on top of an arbitrary point-predicting machine learning model, without explicit statistical assumptions on the nature. Next, based on [arXiv:2405.16642] (NeurIPS’24), I will show that in lifelong reinforcement learning, a theoretically-grounded regularizer can mitigate an intriguing collapse behavior called “loss of plasticity”. These results can be applied to various high-impact modalities of autonomous systems.

Bio: Zhiyu Zhang is currently a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering at Harvard University. He obtained his PhD in systems engineering from Boston University, and BEng in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University. His research centers around the theory and practice of adaptive online learning, which concerns optimal sequential decision making with Bayesian-type prior knowledge. On the application side, he is also excited about various aspects of robotics and automation, especially algorithmic approaches that efficiently utilize large-scale pretraining. He has been recognized by the BU systems engineering outstanding PhD dissertation award, as well as outstanding reviewer awards from NeurIPS, ICML and AISTATS. He also serves as an action editor for the journal TMLR. 

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Tae Kim
Consulting Engineer Systems, Northrop Grumman/Mission Systems 
Friday, Feb. 28 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) announcement (DARPA, 2023) envisions a thriving lunar economy that necessitates rapid scaling of lunar exploration and commerce activities within the next decade. This rapid scaling, facilitated by the deployment of modular lunar infrastructure subsystems, can bring about a paradigm shift in cislunar space exploration. Among these subsystems, power, position navigation timing (PNT), and communication systems are identified as critical infrastructures for early human and machine lunar surface exploration. 

This paper presents a pivotal NGC trade study for modular power, low to medium data rate, and low size, weight, and power (SWaP) mobile joint communications-PNT (Comms-PNT) and Lunar Search and Rescue (LunarSAR) subsystem options, and preliminary performance bounds. These early critical lunar terrestrial Power, Comms-PNT, and LunarSAR network subsystems and their key subcomponents are envisioned to begin covering the South Pole region. The terrestrial Comms-PNT modular subsystems are not just designed to be expandable but also to be adaptable, ensuring that they can evolve to meet the changing PNT and geo-referencing control segment assets per National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems services requirements document (LCRNS SRD) (NASA 2022a & 2022b) to support future LunaNet specification (NASA 2023) for cislunar spacecraft and installations.

Bio: Dr. Taehwan Kim has over 30 years of experience in Space PNT and Communications systems with NASA GSFC, MITRE Corporation, and Industry. He contributed to the GPS L5 waveform and spectrum engineering to coexist with L-band emitters to receive the MITRE president award and the RTCA certification of appreciation. His current R&D areas include high-Doppler LEO, hypersonic, Cislunar PNT-communication, SWARM autonomy, and fusion integrity. He received a Ph.D.EE from the University of Maryland and BS in mathematics from the Seoul National University.

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Nina Vaidya
Assistant Professor, Astronautics and Spacecraft Engineering, University of Southampton, UK
Monday, Feb. 24 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The current fundamental limits such as Shockley–Queisser, ergodic light-trapping limit, diffraction-limited imaging (Abbe diffraction limit), noise in detection, reciprocal optical systems (Lorentz reciprocity), positive homogeneous refractive indices, Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation, mass and specific power of space systems and more are being shattered with new concepts and advanced material design. A bridge between concepts to go beyond these limits and new fabrication techniques using extreme materials to realize them will be outlined; disruptively ushering concepts from being impossible or difficult towards their implementation in large-scale engineering applications. With demonstrations of experimental performance, work on graded-index immersion optics, 3D-printed aerospace optical devices, ultralightweight space reflectors and adaptive optics, metamaterials photonic arrays, novel 2D and bulk materials creating nanoscale thin-film space tested solar cells with integrated multifunctional stacks that are resilient in the harsh space environments will be presented. To conclude, Space-Based Solar Power demo’s space launch and the recent end of mission successes and lessons will be reported. 

These projects, that are tied together in the overarching aim for deeper understanding of light-matter interactions and utilizing space as our new laboratory, are charting the future of energy security and sustainability and the space era.

Bio: In Nov. 2021, Nina joined as an assistant professor in Astronautics and Spacecraft Engineering at the University of Southampton, UK, after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, USA. Nina undertook her undergraduate study in Electronic Engineering at the University of Cambridge, England, UK and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, CA, USA. Nina specializes in the area of optics, optoelectronics,  and material design, especially for space applications.

Nina’s innovations and work on graded index concentrators and 3D printing to create nanometer-smooth optical devices are being featured in over 100s of news articles around the world and her work at Caltech on the Space Based Solar Power project was featured in a BBC interview, created functional prototypes, and recently the demo sent successful results from space in 2024.

Nina is on advisory boards of startups and a guest editor at Springer Nature. Before her Ph.D., Nina worked as a strategy consultant for international engineering companies & original equipment manufacturers in Europe and Asia. Nina was a Stanford DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) scholarship recipient and champions for educational outreach via work with organizations like the IEEE, WIE (Women In Engineering), EWB (Engineers Without Borders), and the UN.

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Damennick Henry
Postdoctoral Scholar, Smead Aerospace
Friday, Feb. 21 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: A new chapter in space exploration has begun, driven by an ambitious goal to develop a sustainable robotic and human presence on the Moon. Within the next decade, national and international entities from the public and private sectors will embark on missions with important objectives ranging from the search for water on the Lunar surface to the demonstration of critical life support technologies in deep space. The pursuit of these goals ensures a future proliferation of vehicles operating in cislunar space, a region in which motion is heavily influenced by the gravitational pull of the Earth and Moon. Together, the Earth and Moon’s gravities create a chaotic dynamical environment that vehicles must operate within. Lunar development demands a robust understanding of these complex dynamics.

Organization within cislunar space’s dynamics can be uncovered by leveraging dynamical systems theory, a branch of applied mathematics that allows us to construct a geometric picture of motion in chaotic systems. Typically, the building blocks of the geometric picture are special solutions such as equilibrium points and periodic orbits along with their stable and unstable manifolds. This talk will present recent research that focuses on leveraging quasi-periodic orbits, a generalized class of bounded motion. Quasi-periodic orbits occur much more frequently and can therefore be utilized to form a more complete understanding of cislunar motion. The seminar will illustrate the benefits of this more complete picture by showing how it can be applied to enable key technologies for Lunar development such as the fuel-efficient maneuvering between various cislunar regions, the accurate mapping of orbits near the Moon, and the coordination of multiple vehicles in unstable regimes.

Bio: Damennick Henry is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the VADeR Laboratory at the University of Colorado. In the fall of 2025, he will begin as an assistant professor in the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics department at the University of Minnesota where his research will focus on developing geometric theory and computational techniques to uncover order in chaotic dynamical environments that the next generation of spacecraft will operate in. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2018 and PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from 91������ in 2024 as a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow and Smead Scholar.

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Dale Lawrence
Professor, Smead Aerospace
Wednesday, Feb. 26 | 1:45 P.M. | AERO 111

Abstract: A system of balloon-borne instruments to conduct descending (wake free) measurements of fine-scale turbulence is described, developed as part of an AFOSR Multi-University Research Initiative called HYFLITS (HYpersonic Flight In the Turbulent Stratosphere).  The system consists of custom high-rate hotwire anemometer and coldwire thermometer, integrated with a commercial radiosonde and a particle sensor, and GPS position and velocity sensing and radio telemetry in a small gondola. The balloon apogee and descent rate are controlled via a custom venting valve in the neck of the balloon to release lifting gas. A custom ground station equipped with an automatic balloon tracking high-gain antenna receives the telemetered measurement data. Development of this system focused on accessing altitudes of interest in the stratosphere for future hypersonic vehicles and to facilitate numerous turbulence observations by lowering the cost of equipment and flight operations. The system is also lightweight enough to be classified as an “unregulated” free balloon in the US and a “light” free balloon in Europe, reducing obstacles due to airspace regulations.

The HYFLITS system has been used in an extended campaign to conduct more than 200 flights observing turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate (e) and temperature structure function parameter (C_T²) with 5m vertical resolution in flights descending from up to 33km and down to 3km. Flights have occurred in Colorado, Minnesota, Florida, Virginia (NASA Wallops), northern Sweden (Esrange), Antarctica (Syowa Station) and Indonesia (Kototabang).

This talk will discuss details of the observation system and its operation, overview the observations to date, and provide an outline of the data reduction and calibration methods used to obtain e and C_T² characterization of turbulence from telemetered data.

Bio: Dale Lawrence has worked most of his career at the intersection of dynamics/control theory and practical applications. This work has been driven by interest in a variety of applications, available funding opportunities, and collaboration with students and colleagues, which has resulted in contributions over a rather eclectic range of problems in system identification and adaptive control, disk drives, tele- and micro-robotics, haptic interfaces, line-of-sight stabilization, solar sail spacecraft, small UAV design and control, and most recently, measurement of atmospheric turbulence and UAV precision landing. 

Professor Lawrence received a B.S. from Colorado State University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Subsequently he worked for Martin Marietta Astronautics (now Lockheed Martin) and returned to academia at the University of Cincinnati before joining the University of Colorado in 1991. He is currently a Professor in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department. 
 

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Jesse Steicher
Research Scientist, Stanford University
Monday, Feb. 17 | 10 a.m. | AERO 114

Abstract: The design of next-generation, high-speed flight vehicles requires a combination of robust flow simulations and low-uncertainty ground test data. Although high-fidelity modeling advancements have improved flow simulations, experimental ground testing has lacked the required measurement sensitivity for model validation, especially at high temperatures. Significant progress in sensitive optical diagnostic techniques, coupled with the expansion of nation-wide ground test facilities, now offers renewed interest and opportunities to advance ground test measurements. 

Recent experimental studies – leveraging quantum-state-specific laser absorption diagnostics – enable measurements of many high-temperature air species, including molecular oxygen (O2), nitric oxide (NO), molecular nitrogen (N2) using CO as a tracer, atomic oxygen (O), and atomic nitrogen (N). These quantum-state-specific time-histories have been used to infer internal energy excitation and chemical reaction rates for important nonequilibrium processes for shock-heated air with the necessary sensitivity for model validation.

Experiments performed in shock tubes probe temperatures from 2,000 - 14,000 K and pressures from 0.022 - 1.524 atm, extending to higher temperatures than any past studies. The resulting quantum-state-specific time-histories were used to isolate key reaction rates in high-temperature nonequilibrium in air. Extension of this measurement technique can apply similar methods to study nonequilibrium relevant to entry to other planetary atmospheres, ablation chemistry, and ionized flows, extending validation data to a wider range of flow conditions and design considerations.

Bio: Jesse Streicher is a research scientist from Prof. Ron Hanson's shock tube laboratory at Stanford University. He graduated with his PhD in 2022, and his postdoctoral research has advanced new techniques for measuring very high vibrational states and high-temperature reaction rates. His research has developed new laser absorption diagnostics for Stanford and the NASA Ames electric arc shock tube (EAST) and inferred time-histories and reaction rates at the extreme conditions relevant to hypersonic and atmospheric entry flows.

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