satellite

A calibration from campus to the cosmos

Nathan Kahl — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:48:15 +0000

A calibration from campus to the cosmos  Nathan Kahl Fri, 08/15/2025 - 10:48

In This Story

�鶹��Ƶ is the home of the $20 million Landolt NASA Space Mission, placing a satellite that will serve as an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth…and College of Engineering and Computing students are instrumental in the payload’s construction. It’s experience that not only significantly bolsters a resume, but also allows students to work on a project of their dreams.  

Fatima Bahzad, a computer science graduate student said, “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in school.”  

Bahzad said that working on the mission is the most fun she's had at George �鶹��Ƶ. Photo provided.

Bahzad explained her role: “The satellite, which is about the size of a bread box, is comprised of layers and each layer has a chip and the chips need to talk to each other. There’s also a primary chip that sends commands to all of them. I’m working on the communication between the chips.”

Getting an opportunity to turn theory into practice is incredibly gratifying, she said. “Learning theoretical stuff is one thing, but applying it is another. This is one of the first opportunities I’ve had to work on something ‘real.’” 

The payload is being built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with whom the teams checks in frequently. The artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will address several open challenges in astrophysics, including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion. 

On the engineering side, the project is led by Piotr Pachowicz, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Pachowicz brought PhD student Jay Deorukhkar, one of his advisees, onto the project.  

Deorukhkar said he’s been working on testing the individual payload modules. These will later integrate with the satellite bus, which is the core structure and support system that is separate from the specific payload. Reliability of small satellite buses against radiation effects is also the subject of his dissertation, making this work particularly relevant.  

Deorukhkar is working on his second project that will send an object into space. Photo provided.

“My role as an engineer is to help design, prototype, and test specific payload components. We’re early in the design stage, working towards the preliminary design review of our payload.” He added, “The great thing about this project is really the end-to-end experience, from the inception of the mission  to the actual launch and operation of the science payload.”  

Deorukhkar has some experience with that, having worked on the ThinSat project in 2021, which sent a small satellite into low earth orbit. He knows about the anxiety as the launch date nears. “It's a bone-chilling moment when the rocket starts and you know your device is on there and it’s out of your hands at that point. You can only pray and trust that everything you've learned and you've done just works.”  

Bahzad is still trying to keep her feet planted on the ground, so to speak, at times overwhelmed to be part of something so significant. “We met recently with some people from NASA and I was just sitting in the corner and couldn’t believe it. I was just thinking, ‘This is so cool!’”   

Housed in the George �鶹��Ƶ College of Science, the mission launches in 2029, when the artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first  year in space. 

�鶹��Ƶ faculty and students will work together with nine other organizations beyond NASA and NIST on this first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area. 

Topics

Space

Electrical and Computer Engineering

satellite

NASA

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

Students

�鶹��Ƶ scientists to work with the U.S. Navy to avert ‘internet apocalypse’

Colleen Rich — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 16:12:46 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ scientists to work with the U.S. Navy to avert ‘internet apocalypse’ Colleen Rich Tue, 08/08/2023 - 12:12

A team of �鶹��Ƶ scientists has received a federal grant of more than $13 million to work with the Department of the Navy to study and better understand increased solar activity that could potentially cause an “internet apocalypse” disrupting all electronic communications on Earth, including satellite communications.

Peter Becker

Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Research from the grant, which will total $13.6 million in expenditures over five years, will be done in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and will include state-of-the-art data mining, analysis, and scientific modeling, among other endeavors, led by �鶹��Ƶ faculty, students and staff. Under the terms of the contract, �鶹��Ƶ provides scientific support for a broad range of astronomy-related activities that are of interest to the U.S. Navy and the nation at large.

“The main focus is on solar activity and the way it can impact systems on Earth,” said principal investigator Peter A. Becker, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within the College of Science. “This is especially important to the Navy—and more broadly the Department of Defense—because high-energy outbursts from the sun can have a strong negative impact on earthly radio and internet communications. And they can also have a detrimental effect on navigation systems and energy grids on Earth.”

The focus on violent solar activity is the most significant research activity for U.S. citizens as eruptions from the sun’s surface can have devastating consequences 93 million miles away on Earth. This violent activity includes bursts of radiation, high-speed electrons, protons and other highly energetic particles that are launched into space and can disrupt technologies such as the internet that we have come to depend on. Much of this activity can reach Earth in less than a day.

Violent solar storms are expected to become more frequent and more severe over the next 10 years, and they possess the potential to severely interfere with radio transmitters, navigation and GPS, satellite operations and communications, and the electric power grid. Being able to more effectively warn of their occurrences will help better protect the public and our infrastructure.

“The internet was simply not designed to handle this level of communication interference, and, consequently, is considered a very ‘soft’ type of infrastructure,” Becker said. “Hence, the period from 2024 to 2028 is a time when the entire internet could conceivably be knocked out for a period of weeks to months in the event of a really extreme solar flare.”

Such a scenario could create “an unprecedented disaster for modern society, potentially triggering a worldwide recession,” Becker warned, because of the world’s heavy dependence on the internet for information, communications and global commerce.

Becker and his team, which also includes several �鶹��Ƶ undergraduate students, will also study black holes and neutron stars. These studies will help scientists understand similar processes occurring in the solar atmosphere and how they can affect life on Earth.

Most of the �鶹��Ƶ team’s work will be performed at the NRL in Washington, D.C., although space has also been allocated at �鶹��Ƶ’s Fairfax Campus to accommodate visiting NRL scientists working on joint space science research projects.

Others researchers working on Becker’s team include associate research professors Tyrel Johnson and Iulia Deneva; senior research administrator Jessica Hanna; research scientists Jacob Smith, Carlos Braga, Natsuha Kuroda, Eliana Nossa Gonzalez and Craig Johnston; senior research scientists Megan DeCesar and Keiji Hayashi, postdoctoral research fellows Sherry Chhabra, Micah Weberg, and Shaheda Shaik.

“�鶹��Ƶ scientists are working to explore and understand the nature and level of these dangerous threats to our infrastructure posed by strong solar activity,” Becker said, “and how to predict extreme events and mitigate the damage.”

Delve into physics and astronomy at �鶹��Ƶ

George �鶹��Ƶ Readies Reclaimed Satellite Dish

Tama Moni — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:37:25 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ Readies Reclaimed Satellite Dish Tama Moni Thu, 10/27/2022 - 12:37

In This Story

Peter Pachowicz

For �鶹��Ƶ's Peter Pachowicz, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, things are looking up—up to space, specifically. Pachowicz is eager to finally make what will be the largest satellite dish in the Washington, D.C., area, which was nearly discarded a few years ago, available to undergraduate students.

Satellite dish at �鶹��Ƶ

As previously reported in 2020, the university was planning to toss the 27-year-old, 30-foot satellite dish on its Fairfax Campus. Said Pachowicz at the time, “If we didn’t take it, it was headed to the scrap yard,” adding that a new dish the same size would cost more than $1 million.

CACI, a longtime corporate partner of the Volgenau School of Engineering, stepped in to help, providing funds to make the dish, which was donated and financially supported by a subsidiary of the �鶹��Ƶ Instructional Foundation, available to students. CACI provides expertise and technology—including satellite engineering and space operations—in support of national security.

CACI Chief Technology Officer Glenn Kurowski said, “The dish is a compelling asset that we helped salvage for a new mission. Our industry needs innovative young talent in satellite communications, digital signal processing, and RF. There’s no better way to learn this than by combining academic instruction with experiential learning on real-world equipment.”

The first big project for the dish, dubbed Space Communications Ground Station, or SpaceCom, is for a senior design team to work on the dish guidance system, including dish motion control and feedback from position sensors.

The dish will be available to engineering students, as well as those in other �鶹��Ƶ schools and colleges, allowing for multidisciplinary, hands-on experience. Pachowicz notes that when he tells students about the opportunity to do projects with SpaceCom, “[they] jump at the chance and ask when they can work on it.”

Topics

satellite

space operations

digital signal processing

�鶹��Ƶat50

Aerospace

Electrical and Computer Engineering seniors excel in space and satellite student competition

Tama Moni — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 13:28:09 +0000

Electrical and Computer Engineering seniors excel in space and satellite student competition Tama Moni Wed, 06/08/2022 - 09:28

In This Story

Peter Pachowicz

A team of seniors from the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department combined their knowledge and skills to win the Space and Satellites Professionals International (SSPI) student prize competition.

Kelsey Schneider, the team’s leader, says they designed a satellite radar system to extract and transmit data from one antenna to another. Schneider says the satellite radar systems at space stations contain large and expensive antennas for this purpose. She says space stations use the Synthetic Aperture Radar System – SARS – to monitor a planet’s environment.

“The goal was to build a low-cost, low-size, weight and power synthetic aperture system,” Schneider said. “Our antennae was only about four inches in diameter.”

She said the satellite radar system transmits electrical waves and transmits data when the radar detects an object. Then the electrical waves bounce off the object and get sent back to the radar system. The radar then transmits the data through the antennas. They used a computer algorithm to convert the received data into an image.

Schneider said the hardest part of the competition was finding a balance between the technical and non-technical language used to explain the project to an easy-to-understand presentation. “You can’t be so nontechnical that it just doesn’t make sense,” Schneider said. “You don’t want it to sound silly.”

The competition featured a variety of competitors, ranging from graduate students to PhD students both competing as teams and individuals.

“We just felt really grateful. There were a lot of other really good projects and presentations we got to see. So, we were just really honored that they chose us out of the other teams.”

The competition was hosted by SSPI, who had reached out to Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Peter Pachowicz and Jay Deorukhkar, a PhD student and teaching assistant in the ECE department.

Deorukhkar was assigned to the team’s senior design class. While looking for projects to nominate, he reached out to Qiliang Li, a professor in the ECE department, who is the faculty advisor for the senior design projects.

As for how he feels about this team’s win in the SSPI competition: “Since we did not compete last year, it was great to see them participate and win this year."

The team also won the ECE award for their senior design project. The competition took place on May 12, 2022.