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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 27, 2017 / 3:30 PM, Building 8 Auditorium

Larry Kepko

"The Dellingr Cubesat Mission"

ABSTRACT -- The Dellingr spacecraft is NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC's) first build of a 6U CubeSat. A key driver of the Dellingr project is the recognition that NASA needs to infuse the emergent CubeSat capability into our science missions to support small, focused science objectives while also enabling larger strategic constellation missions in support of Decadal Survey science goals. The primary objective of the Dellingr project was to develop a cost-effective model for CubeSat and SmallSat builds at GSFC with lean end-to-end systems and processes to enable lower-cost, scalable risk, systems. Dellingr is a balance of commercial off the shelf (COTS) and in-house subsystems, leveraging the strengths of both the booming commercial market and existing GSFC infrastructure, capabilities, and experience with similar "Do No Harm" missions, such as sounding rockets.

Dellingr carries an advanced gated time-of-flight ion/neutral mass spectrometer (INMS) and three fluxgate magnetometers. Two of these magnetometers are internal to the spacecraft, and will be used to test and validate a new software algorithm that compensates for and removes spacecraft interference; the third magnetometer sits at the end of a 50 cm boom. Together, these instruments will measure the space weather effects of solar wind-magnetosphere coupling on Earth's ion and neutral upper atmosphere. Dellingr is currently on ISS awaiting deployment August 20th.

This talk covers the wealth of lesson learned from the project.

SPEAKER -- Larry Kepko is a research astrophysicist in the Space Weather Laboratory of the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. His science interests range from the magnetosphere, where he studies the dynamics of magnetospheric substorms, to the solar wind, where he studies number density and composition periodicities in an effort to understand solar plasma release. He is also well known for discovering the directly-driven Pi2, a magnetic oscillation associated with substorms, and for discovering solar wind- driven oscillations. He was co-I on the CRaTER instrument on LRO and the RBSP-ECT suite, and is currently Deputy Project Scientist for THEMIS.

He has advocated for years on the importance of CubeSats and SmallSats for achieving NASA science objectives, and is Chief Scientist for the newly formed GSFC SmallSat Office.

He has held multiple leadership positions, including Chair of IAGA Division III, Tail Research Area Coordinator for GEM, and chair of the G-MOWG for several years. He is currently an editor for JGR - Space Physics. In 2001 he was awarded AGU's Fred L. Scarf award for outstanding dissertation research that contributes directly to solar-planetary science.

He earned a BS in Astrophysics from UCLA in 1993, and a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA in 2000, working under the guidance of Margaret Kivelson. He worked at Boston University and the University of New Hampshire before Joining GSFC in 2009. He is currently on detail to NASA HQ as the Senior Program Executive for SubOrbital and Special Orbital Research.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov