gEDA-user: Looking for an MIT student

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The CCD Laboratory at MIT Kavli Institute is starting to develop a  
prototype photometric CCD camera system for a new space mission. This  
is an experienced group that's done quite a few space missions, but  
this one is new, has a modest budget, and a short timeline. They're  
looking for help.

This is a group that appreciates flexibility and innovative thinking.  
This isn't going to be the usual aerospace development where one  
engineer does one small piece to rigid specifications. These folks  
will figure out how to use all your talents, even those you don't  
know you have yet. A small mission on a short fuse is the most fun  
kind of space development, and a student who comes in now will be  
"getting in on the ground floor". I note that a somewhat similar  
project (short fuse, modest budget, cutting edge astronomical  
instrumentation) at the same MIT lab became the senior thesis that  
launched my career 35(!) years ago. But I'm not the last student to  
have gotten a good bounce out of that environment.

This group has made "smaller, faster, cheaper, better" actually work,  
see http://space.mit.edu/HETE/ (although that page is a bit out of  
date now). HETE-2 was a highly successful six year mission. And it  
was fun! But challenging, like this new mission.

I'm writing this as the contractor for the mixed signal design and as  
a gEDA user. I recognize the strong MIT connections of the gEDA  
community. We have the following EE tasks to get done soon:

Camera interface. Here, we want to use the "Camera Link" standard  
(http://www.alacron.com/downloads/vncl98076xz/CameraLinkSPEC.pdf).  
We've never used this before, but it appears to have virtues that  
would be a good match to our mission. The big thing here is an FPGA  
design to glue the mixed signal stuff to the interface, but there's  
also work to be done to acquire images in a form useful for  
subsequent processing using our Linux "Ground Support Equipment" setup.

Camera drive and digitization electronics. This is nominally on my  
plate, and I'm hoping that I can adapt designs I already have in gEDA  
for most of it. Surely, though, there are changes needed, analyses to  
perform, and everything will need review and test (please, somebody,  
review my stuff: I'm performing without a net here...). I'm not going  
to be defensive about my turf: there'll be plenty for me to do even  
if MKI finds me plenty of help!

There's plenty more. I can see UROP and thesis opportunities (any  
level) for students in Courses 6, 8, 12, 16 and maybe others. There  
are a lot of different kinds of problems that need solving to make a  
space mission work. If you are an interested student, please contact:

George Ricker (Principal Investigator) grr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 37-535 x3-7532
or
Roland Vanderspek (Project Scientist) roland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 37-527  
x3-8456

If any other gEDA folks know a student who might be interested,  
please pass this message along.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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