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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

Photo of Dr. Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, September 25 , 2017 / 3:30 PM, Building 8 Auditorium

Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac

"Laser Rangefinding and Formation Flying"

ABSTRACT -- There is growing interest in conducting science missions using formations of multiple small spacecraft instead of a single, larger spacecraft. Smaller spacecraft can be developed more rapidly and at significantly lower cost than larger spacecraft and can form a configuration larger than is possible using structures or booms. One such mission concept is to form a distributed telescope by placing a focusing optic on one spacecraft and the science detector on a second spacecraft. The difficulty is in maintaining the optical alignment of the two spacecraft. Longitudinal separation between the spacecraft must be maintained within the depth of field of the telescope, ( ~1 mm for a focal length of 100m) while transverse alignment must be held to within a single pixel of the science detector (typically 1-5 microns) to prevent smearing of the image on the detector. Team members at GSFC have been developing technologies needed to monitor and control relative alignment of two spacecraft to the precision necessary to enable a distributed telescope. A description of the laser based relative position sensing system under development will be presented as well as a discussion of how this technology fits into the larger effort at GSFC to enable high precision formation flying spacecraft.

SPEAKER -- Dr. Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac has worked for NASA for 17 years. She was the laser subsystem design lead for the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) instrument on the MESSENGER mission and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument on the LRO mission. She also served 8 years at NASA HQ as a Program Executive in the Science Mission Directorate. For the past two years Dr. Novo-Gradac has been working with colleagues at GSFC to develop a laser remote sensing system with sufficient precision to enable distributed telescopes with 100m+ focal lengths.

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