Staff Scientist - In The Space Science Division Of The Swri Space Sector
CurrentAt present I am working on six projects with five of them aiming towards the Moon. The first is working on the ENABLE instrument. It is a Software-Defined Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (SD-QMS) targeted towards measuring the Lunar Exosphere. It will be used for an astronaut deployable instrument, astronaut hand-held instrument, a mobile vehicle mounted instrument or in a series of networked instruments monitoring large-scale areas of the Moon's surface. The second is the development of a Lunar Surface Observatory (LSO). This is an astronaut-deployed, self-sustained, instrument observatory targeted for use on any of the Artemis Moon missions and for any lunar instrumentation. The third is the LACE II science mission, combining the ENABLE instruments with the LSO. It is targeted for Artemis IV's astronaut deployed instruments program. LACE II is the Lunar Atmospheric Composition Experiment 2 and is named this after the LACE mass-spec placed on the Moon by Apollo 17 astronauts 50 years ago. ." The fourth and fifth are LACE X(TBD) which are geared towards adapting the ENABLE instrument as a Lunar Lander mounted or Lunar Vehicle mounted instrument. For the sixth, I am completing the development and TRL-6 qualification of a payload controller for CubeSats. Commercially available CubeSats, like Blue Canyon Tech., are not designed to control science instruments nor aid in processing or packaging the large quantities of data they produce. This payload controller has been designed and is now being built and will be qualified to TRL-6 early in 2024.
