Cancelled - Visiting Speaker - Dr. Regina SK Lee

This talk has been cancelled

The Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Visiting Speaker Series Presents:

Dr. Regina SK Lee, York University

Talk Title: Nanosatellite Technologies for Space Situational Awareness (SSA)

Date: Thursday, September 28

Time: 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm 

Location: Miller Hall, Room 201

Coffee and treats will be served.

Abstract: 

Space systems play an important and integral role in every facet of our daily lives, including national security and resource management. Therefore, it is critical to protect our valuable assets in space through space surveillance and build resiliency in space systems. In this presentation, an overview of technology advancement in the space research, in particular, nanosatellite (smaller than 10 kg) missions for space surveillance are discussed. Most significant advancement in nanosatellite technologies came alongside the advances in microsystems technologies. It has been a focus of our research team at York University, to develop a series of nanosatellite technologies that will lead us to an advanced scientific mission in near future. Several technologies are under development including optical phased array design, sun sensor development and star trackers. In particular, our recent effort is on (1) nanosatellite attitude control system and (2) resident space object (RSO) detection and identification using a wide field of view cameras such as star trackers. Two key technologies – digital sun sensor design on IRIS mission (Geology mission on a CubeSat platform) and RSONAR mission onboard Stratos Balloon platform are presented as examples of technology development for space-borne scientific missions.

In developing a digital sun sensor (DSS), significant improvements in the design is enabled by advanced micro-systems fabrication and optical sensing technologies. For the IRIS mission (often described as a marriage between geology and engineering), we developed a simple single-slit DSS concept with improved accuracy using sub-pixel interpolation. In considering the DSS design, we focused on several characteristics of the sun sensor, including field-of-view, sensor accuracy, complexity, and computational requirements. From the simulation study, the optimal mask design was determined based on the simple geometry of the slit size, mask height and pixel width. The final demonstration from the in-orbit operation of IRIS is expected once the communication to the satellite is established. Second payload, RSONAR technology demonstration payload, Resident Space Object Near-space Astrometric Research (RSONAR) is a star tracker-like, wide FOV camera combined with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to image RSOs from the stratosphere, overcoming the disadvantages of ground-based observations. This newly developed payload in a 2U-CubeSat form factor was flown as a space-ready payload on the CSA/CNES stratospheric balloon research platform to carry out algorithm and functionality tests in August 2022. Results and lessons learned from the campaign are described in the presentation.

Bio: 

Regina Lee, PhD, PEng is Professor at the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, York University, Toronto, Canada. Prof. Lee received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2000. From 2000 to 2007 she worked at Dynacon Inc. as a (NSERC) industry post-doctoral fellow, and later as a Research Scientist. Prof. Lee’s research interests center on nanosatellite technology development. It has been a focus of Prof. Lee’s research to develop a series of space technologies that will lead to scientific nanosatellite missions. Currently, she’s investigating several areas including MEMS based attitude sensors and actuators to incorporate their low-grade characteristics; and optical payloads including a star tracker for Resident Space Object (RSO) detection, identification and characterization with light curve analysis. E-mail reginal@yorku.ca.