Timothy K. Minton News

CU Boulder lands $5.5 million Air Force project to advance orbital and AI research

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 15:01:46 +0000

CU Boulder lands $5.5 million Air Force project to advance orbital and AI research Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/23/2022 - 09:01

Jeff Zehnder

The waning gibbous Moon above the Earth's horizon over the Atlantic Ocean.

A team of University of Colorado Boulder researchers is embarking on a major research project that will advance our understanding of orbital mechanics and monitoring, artificial intelligence, and hypersonics.

Led by Marcus Holzinger, an associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, the group has signed a $5.54 million, five-year cooperative agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory to advance science and monitoring for next generation of space vehicles – particularly those that will travel beyond low Earth orbit to the Moon.

“These are really complex multi-domain applications in the defense world and we’re bringing together preeminent researchers to tackle these problems,” Holzinger said. “There’s a real opportunity to make important advances.”

The cooperative agreement represents a significant expansion of the relationship between Smead Aerospace and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate. Holzinger said the project will include ongoing collaboration and could evolve and change as the research develops.

“The region in, around, and affected by the Earth-Moon-Sun system has drastically increased in commercial activity and Department of Defense mission relevance over the last few years,” Holzinger said. “There are more and more missions going to the Moon – not just our missions but India, China, and Europe as well. That means there needs to be some sensible tracking and detection of what’s going on out there and this project addresses that crucial need directly.”

Holzinger said this area, called space domain awareness, is important for national defense and to ensure spaceflight safety and responsible behavior. Currently, the Air Force maintains tracking networks to actively catalog space vehicles to avoid collisions. However, these systems only work for spacecraft orbiting the Earth, not the Moon, and growing traffic in orbit around Earth has made collision avoidance increasingly complicated.

NASA Orbital Debris Program illustration of satellites and space debris in low Earth orbit.

To address this, the team will work to develop a framework for spacecraft to make autonomous maneuvering decisions without human input by using artificial intelligence both for collision avoidance and to execute complex tasks, said Morteza Lahijanian, an assistant professor in Smead Aerospace and a member of the project team.

“This research will teach us how to go about designing safe autonomy for complex systems, especially in a setting where multiple space vehicles need to cooperate,” said Lahijanian. “This research can lead to designing fully autonomous spacecraft that we can trust, and would eliminate the role of humans who are typically the source of errors in the design or execution of missions.”

The work also aims to better understand the unique orbital dynamics surrounding the Moon to help future researchers and commercial projects, said Holzinger.

“We’re really interested in what sorts of repeating natural orbits are best for various applications and what are the best ways to get to and from those orbits,” Holzinger said. “We want to develop design tools so mission engineers can more easily answer these questions. Right now there are not enough experts that can do that work to meet the need.”

A third goal for the cooperative agreement aims to advance the science of hypersonic vehicles. Hypersonics is an active area of research around the world for national defense purposes.

During hypersonic flight, a vehicle and the gasses surrounding it can reach thousands of degrees, triggering chemical reactions. The team hopes to develop and validate models that will ensure hypersonic vehicle signatures, heat flux, and materials response can be predicted with minimal uncertainty.

In addition to Holzinger and Lahijanian, additional CU Boulder faculty partners include professors Natasha Bosanac, Tim Minton, Hanspeter Schaub, and Dan Scheeres.

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CU Boulder awarded major Department of Defense research grant for hypersonics

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:15:14 +0000

CU Boulder awarded major Department of Defense research grant for hypersonics Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/30/2022 - 09:15

Jeff Zehnder

Rendering of a hypersonic vehicle in flight. Iain Boyd is leading a five-year, $7.5 million Department of Defense MURI grant to advance the science of hypersonics.

The University of Colorado Boulder has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to advance the science of hypersonic flight.

Iain Boyd, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at CU Boulder, is leading the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) from the Department of Defense.

The grant will investigate plasma that forms around sub-orbital vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds, which can cause radio communication blackouts and impacts aerothermal heating.

“This is a major funding opportunity from the Department of Defense,” Boyd said. “This is fundamental research motivated by national security. We don’t understand how plasma forms at these specific speeds. Plasma also forms around vehicles coming back from space, and we know quite well how that happens, but there’s this new class of hypersonic vehicles. They’re fast, but not as fast as when you come back from space, and it turns out we don’t understand how plasma forms there.”

Hypersonics is an active area of research around the world for national defense purposes. Both China and 91��Ƭ�� have successfully introduced hypersonic weapons. The U.S. has not. Boyd views the development of hypersonic weapons as necessary to ensuring parity with other national defense forces.

“For decades we led hypersonics research, but in the last 10 years, China and 91��Ƭ�� have leapt ahead,” Boyd said. “Both say they have hypersonic weapons fielded, meaning somebody can push a button and fire one. We don’t have that in the U.S.”

During hypersonic flight, the temperature of air and other gases around a vehicle can reach thousands of degrees, triggering chemical reactions. The research at CU Boulder will investigate the breakdown and collisions of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon molecules in this environment using advanced computational modeling and experimental tests with molecular beams, shock tubes and hypersonic wind tunnels.

“It will probably take a year just to do experiments on nitrogen and oxygen atoms,” Boyd said. “It takes a lot of time to set these experiments up and do these computations. We want to know how, when and why this plasma forms to build up our ability to predict it.”

Joining in the research are aerospace faculty members Robyn Macdonald, whose efforts are concentrated on computational analysis, and Tim Minton, who is focused on molecular experiments to validate the computational research.

“I am excited about the opportunity to push the frontier and understand these collisional processes that have never before been studied and to contribute to the development of practical modeling tools in the field of hypersonics,” Minton said.

The research grant includes multiple universities in the U.S. and around the world. University of New Mexico, Ohio State University, Stanford University and Oxford University in England are all part of the project.

“This work brings together a team of researchers with broad expertise in experiments and modeling at different scales to tackle an important problem of plasma generation in hypersonic flows,” Minton said. “Our interdisciplinary team is uniquely qualified to do this.”

Boyd notes the partnership with Oxford is a testament to the importance of the research to both the United States and our allies.

“The British government has agreed to fund the work at Oxford,” Boyd said. “Essentially, the U.S. government is leveraging British resources and the British government is leveraging U.S. resources. I think this is very unusual.”

The grant, titled Development of Validated Hypersonic Plasma Kinetics Models Including Atomic Excitation, is one of 28 MURI awards announced by the Department of Defense. They were chosen from 340 applications submitted for fiscal year 2022.

The University of Colorado Boulder has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to advance the science of hypersonic flight. The grant will investigate plasma that forms around sub-orbital vehicles traveling at...

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Researching chemical interactions at the edge of space for more durable satellites and hypersonic vehicles

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 16:35:55 +0000

Researching chemical interactions at the edge of space for more durable satellites and hypersonic vehicles Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/01/2020 - 10:35

Jeff Zehnder

Timothy K. Minton is expanding critical research at the edge of space – uncovering chemical and physical processes in extreme environments like those experienced by satellites in Low Earth Orbit and hypersonic vehicles.

A new professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, Minton is joining the department following more than two decades at Montana State University. He brings with him a portfolio of research and equipment to complement the department's strong space weather and growing hypersonics fields.

"I study atomic and molecular collisions relevant to space travel, looking at gas-surface interactions," Minton said. "I want to understand what atoms and molecules are doing at the most fundamental level."

A PhD graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, Minton’s education was in chemistry, but he has long felt a strong pull to the aerospace realm.

After earning his PhD, he spent five years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was drawn to the interactions between spacecraft and the extreme upper atmosphere.

Minton then joined Montana State, where he extensively studied the effects of atomic oxygen in the LEO environment. Materials experience significant degradation in this zone, and Minton has been a leader in the understanding and mitigation of its effects on long-duration satellites.

He has more recently applied his techniques to the study of the molecular-level processes at the gas-surface boundary on heat shields for hypersonic vehicles.

A necessary feature of all hypersonic craft, heat shields protect the astronauts and electronics inside from the massive temperatures generated during atmospheric entry. Composed of exotic composites, heat shields experience temperatures that exceed the melting points of iron and steel.

A new area for Minton is the study of how the current state-of-the-art in ablative heat shields -- phenolic-carbon, gradually decompose as they become hot. This intentional process helps to carry heat away from and protect a re-entry capsule.

“Phenolic-carbon was used on the Mars Science Laboratory and is on SpaceX's Dragon, but we're still learning more about how these type of materials behave, so that future designs and materials can be optimized in terms of function and mass," Minton said. "NASA's also working on new ablative heat shields, and the U.S. Department of Defense is studying new ceramic materials they do not want to ablate.”

Reliable non-ablative heat shields, that is, heat shields that do not wear down or burn off through use, represent a significant materials challenge for researchers like Minton. He is excited about the prospect advancing that study and by the opportunities for new collaborations at CU Boulder.

Minton was one of the only aerospace researchers at Montana State. CU Boulder offers dozens of aerospace and related experts within the College of Engineering as well as at campus research centers like the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and nearby federal labs and commercial industries.

“I'm excited about this new adventure. I got involved in hypersonics about a decade ago through a multidisciplinary university research initiative. My collaborations with modelers in this area have been very fruitful. I've been able to provide data that they didn't have before, and I have really enjoyed participating in the applications of the fundamental data that I generate in my lab,” Minton said.

Although both Montana and Colorado are known for outdoor lifestyles, Minton said he is eager to experience the great indoors – his new laboratory in AERO N140. While he is an avid walker, and purchased a home close enough to the Aerospace Building to allow him to walk to work, his true calling is in breaking new frontiers of science.

“I admit I’m not very outdoorsy,” Minton said. “There are always new things that I want to discover in the lab; I feel like a kid in a sandbox.”

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NASA Technology Innovation: Baptism by Fire - Early Stage Research in Heat Shields

Anonymous — Thu, 10 May 2018 20:49:17 +0000

NASA Technology Innovation: Baptism by Fire - Early Stage Research in Heat Shields Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/10/2018 - 14:49

NASA funds academic research to improve the Agency’s entry, descent, and landing simulations.

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Nature Chemistry: OH electron, where art thou?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:59:15 +0000

Nature Chemistry: OH electron, where art thou? Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/20/2013 - 14:59

The study of the reaction of a ground-state O atom with H₂ has previously proved difficult because of its high activation barrier. Now, new experiments have revealed unexpected OH product states; but perhaps there is a simple explanation?

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C&E News: Unexpected Chemical Dynamics Revealed At High Energy

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:00:26 +0000

C&E News: Unexpected Chemical Dynamics Revealed At High Energy Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/09/2012 - 15:00

Reactants colliding at elevated energies reveal surprising mechanisms

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