ECE Joins Forces with Intelsat to Prepare Future Satellite Communication Leaders

Through collaboration with industry leaders, the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is advancing its curriculum to better prepare students for today’s dynamic workforce, this time reaching beyond Earth’s atmosphere. 

ECE has joined forces with Intelsat, a major operator of one of the world’s largest integrated satellite and terrestrial networks, to improve industry access for students and strengthen the School’s satellite communications curriculum.

“We are thrilled to partner with Intelsat,” said Arijit Raychowdhury, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE and professor. “This collaboration is a significant step in providing our students with cutting-edge knowledge and hands-on experience in a field that is crucial for global connectivity and technological advancement.” 

Intelsat, with its administrative headquarters in McLean, Va., operates nearly 60 geostationary satellites, including satellites from all major manufacturers, to provide secure and reliable satellite connectivity to governments, businesses, and communities across the globe. The company has a presence of about 250 employees in Ellenwood, Ga. 

“Georgia Tech is renowned for its innovative approach to engineering education and research,” said Carmel Ortiz, senior vice president of technology and innovation at Intelsat and a Georgia Tech alum. “This collaboration allows us to contribute to the development of future leaders in satellite communications, ensuring that the next generation is well-equipped to tackle the challenges of an increasingly connected world.” 

Read the full story here.

AE Alumna Kathryn Engelhardt: Shattering Glass Ceilings with Intellect and Resilience

AE alumna Kathryn “Kathy” Engelhardt (AE 1982, M.S. AE 1983), née Dunlop, has returned to Georgia, steps away from her beloved Georgia Tech, grateful for every leg of her journey. She reflected on her extraordinary experiences, lifelong friendships, and the lessons learned. Georgia Tech equipped her to excel in industry and navigate male-dominated spaces with tenacity and grace. 

The Wonder Years

Born to a Jamaican mother and father of Irish descent, Kathy’s fascination with space and aviation set her apart from her peers early on. Her first plane ride at five sparked a lifelong love for the skies. While vacationing in Italy at nine, the precocious child begged to stay in the hotel room to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing instead of exploring Italy.

“I loved to build things and was always taking things apart and putting them back together,” she shared.

Math came easy, and she told everyone who would listen that she wanted to be an astronaut. So much so that her stepfather’s German clients recommended that she go to Georgia Tech if she wanted to do aerospace and design rockets and space shuttles. She was only 13 then, but the idea stuck in her head. When the time came, she applied to Harvard, Princeton, and Georgia Tech. She was accepted to all three, but Georgia Tech was always her top choice.

Read the full story here.

Nunn School Launches New Space Policy Center

The space around Earth is central to life on the surface, encompassing myriad economic, technological, political, and even military considerations that affect the lives of millions. A new center devoted to space policy in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs seeks to support the School’s increasingly robust research and teaching in the area. 

“Space is becoming an increasingly important domain for our economy and our national security in the United States, as well as worldwide,” said Mariel Borowitz, associate professor in the Nunn School and director of the new Center for Space Policy and International Relations, which holds its first event next week in Washington. “This center can be a hub that brings researchers together and makes progress on these key research issues.” 

The Center, which counts six Nunn School researchers among its initial faculty, seeks to advance research in space governance, space security, and the development of space programs internationally, as well as in areas related to international cooperation and diplomacy. 

Read the full story here.

New lunar sample research could help protect astronauts and uncover the origins of water on the moon

Dust and rocks residing on the surface of the moon take a beating in space. Without a protective magnetosphere and atmosphere like Earth’s, the lunar surface faces continual particle bombardment from solar wind, cosmic rays, and micrometeoroids. This constant assault leads to space weathering. 

New NASA-funded research by Georgia Tech offers fresh insights into the phenomenon of space weathering. Examining Apollo lunar samples at the nanoscale, Tech researchers have revealed risks to human space missions and the possible role of space weathering in forming some of the water on the moon. 

Most previous studies of the moon involved instruments mapping it from orbit. In contrast, this study allowed researchers to spatially map a nanoscale sample while simultaneously analyzing optical signatures of Apollo lunar samples from different regions of the lunar surface — and to extract information about the chemical composition of the lunar surface and radiation history. 

The researchers recently published their findings in Scientific Reports

“The presence of water on the moon is critical for the Artemis program. It’s necessary for sustaining any human presence and it’s a particularly important source for oxygen and hydrogen, the molecules derived from splitting water,” said Thomas Orlando, Regents’ Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, co-founder and former director of the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research, and principal investigator of Georgia Tech’s Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER).

Read the full story here!

What’s the Shape of the Universe? Mathematicians Use Topology to Study the Shape of the World and Everything in it

When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you’re living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you can navigate a new city using a map: a flat piece of paper that represents all the places around you. This is likely why some people in the past believed the earth to be flat. But most people now know that is far from the truth.

You live on the surface of a giant sphere, like a beach ball the size of the Earth with a few bumps added. The surface of the sphere and the plane are two possible 2D spaces, meaning you can walk in two directions: north and south or east and west.

What other possible spaces might you be living on? That is, what other spaces around you are 2D? For example, the surface of a giant doughnut is another 2D space.

Through a field called geometric topology, mathematicians like me study all possible spaces in all dimensions. Whether trying to design secure sensor networksmine data or use origami to deploy satellites, the underlying language and ideas are likely to be that of topology.

Read more here.

New Algorithms Developed at Georgia Tech are Lunar Bound

AE researchers have developed new algorithms to help Intuitive Machine’s lunar lander find water ice on the Moon.  

In the past five years, five lunar landers have launched into space, marking a series of first successful landings in decades. The future will see more of these type of missions, including NASA’s Artemis program and various private ventures. These missions need reliable and quick navigation abilities to successfully complete missions, especially if ground stations on Earth are overburdened or disconnected. 

Georgia Tech’s Space Exploration and Analysis Laboratory (SEAL) has developed new algorithms that are headed to the Moon, as part of the Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission. The mission is sending a Nova-C class lunar lander named Athena to the Moon’s south pole region to test technologies and collect data that aim to enable future exploration. The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Read the full story here.

AE Professor Masatoshi Hirabayashi Studies Compelling Way to Deflect Asteroids From Earth

Small rocks and debris fly near Earth, many just passing by. Some, however, come too close to Earth, with a potential threat of collision. Defending Earth from these unwanted objects is a growing concern globally. Planetary defense explores threat characterization, risk mitigation, and policy to defend Earth. One mitigation approach is sending an impactor to collide with the target object to deflect its trajectory from the original course toward Earth. This approach, known as kinetic deflection, is practical for intruders with a diameter up to a few hundred meters.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), led by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, was the first full-scale kinetic deflection mission to test how kinetic deflection could effectively push an asteroid measuring 150 meters in diameter. The 580-kg spacecraft (impactor) collided with the target asteroid, Dimorphos, at a speed of 6.1 km/second on September 26, 2022, making the target’s speed 2.7 mm/s. This speed change could gradually make the course deviate from the original one. The more time that elapses after impact, the further it moves away from the Earth. Even though Dimorphos was not a threat before the impact, it was chosen as a test target for DART’s kinetic deflection test.

Georgia Tech Professor Masatoshi Hirabayashi’s critical contribution to DART was recently published in Nature Communications. The study, “Elliptical ejecta of asteroid Dimorphos is due to its surface curvature” analyzed the behavior of fragments coming out by the high-speed DART impact and their push of the asteroid. This work was in collaboration with Professor Fabio Ferrari from Politecnico di Milano, who jointly published the study, “Morphology of ejecta features from the impact on asteroid Dimorphos.”  

Imagine a cannonball flying through the air and hitting a concrete wall. The wall shutters and fragmented pieces disperse at high speeds. Those smaller fragments, called ejecta, are known to be a key factor in controlling the asteroid push.

The study found that the ejecta from the impact site on Dimorphos highly depends on the asteroid’s shape. As a rule of thumb, a cannonball hitting a flat concrete wall creates ejecta departing from the wall at an angle of about 45 degrees from the wall’s surface. The cloud of ejecta thus looks like a waffle cone. However, if the concrete wall’s surface is tilted against the impact direction, the fragment ejection changes, making the ejecta structure differ even if the impactor has the same mass and speed. 

“This changes the asteroid push dramatically. Dimorphos has a squashed round shape, like an M&M,” Hirabayashi explained, “If the impact is large, more ejecta fly out of the surface but are more affected by surface tilts. This process makes the ejecta deviate from the ideal direction, reducing the asteroid push.” 

For the DART impact on Dimorphos, the study identified the impact scale and the asteroid’s rounded surface lowered the asteroid push by 56% compared to when Dimorphos was tested as an entirely flat wall. Thus, sending a large impactor does not mean a big push, and considering how to send impactors strategically is necessary. One way to keep the asteroid push effective is to send multiple small impactors rather than a single large impactor. This way, each small impactor may avoid the target’s rounded shape, and the net asteroid push by multiple impacts can be more efficient than the single impactor.

Read the full story here.

AE, BME Students Named 2025 Brooke Owens Fellows

Three Georgia Tech students will receive paid internships, executive mentorship, and industry connections to leading aerospace organizations.

Three Georgia Tech engineering students have been named to the 2025 class of Brooke Owens Fellows, a nationally competitive program that supports exceptional undergraduate women and gender minorities in aerospace with paid internships and executive mentors.

Andra Oltean, Catherine Fang, and Sara Kapasi join 44 other undergraduates from around the country in the ninth cohort of fellows. Oltean and Fang are studying aerospace engineering; Kapasi is a biomedical engineering student. They join a long list of Georgia Tech students perennially selected for the “Brookies.”

Founded in 2017, the fellowship honors the legacy of space policy expert and pilot Brooke Owens by empowering the next generation of aerospace industry leaders. Fellows gain hands-on experience through internships at leading aerospace organizations and receive guidance from mentors who are top executives, astronauts, and innovators in the field.

Read more here.

Turning to CubeSats in the Search for Life Thousands of Light-Years from Earth

Georgia Tech plays a starring role in NASA’s STARI mission to determine if telescope technology that studies exoplanets can be implemented in briefcase-sized spacecraft. 

A new NASA-funded project will have Georgia Tech aerospace engineers developing new technology to one day study planets outside our solar system. 

It’s a $10 million joint mission led by the University of Michigan called STARI — STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry. Georgia Tech’s engineers will build the propulsion systems for a pair of briefcase-sized CubeSats that will fly in orbit a few hundred yards away from one another, bouncing starlight back and forth. 

The technology could be used someday to better understand if any known exoplanets are capable of supporting life as we know it.

Interferometry is already used to study stars, gas clouds, and galaxies. Instead of using one large telescope, several smaller telescopes work as a team. The machines swap starlight to create higher resolution images than are possible from a single telescope. 

Scientists and engineers have recently proposed using interferometry to locate exoplanets. 

STARI will determine if the same type of coordination and light transmission can be done using less expensive CubeSats. Although STARI won’t peer at exoplanets, it will test the ability of small satellites to gather light into a hair-like optical fiber, then beam that light to a partner up to 100 meters away.

Click here to read the full story.

Griendling Inaugural Recipient of the C. Virgil Smith Faculty Teaching Award

AE Lecturer Kelly Griendling, AE 2006, M.S. AE 2008, Ph.D. AE 2011, is the first recipient of the C. Virgil Smith Faculty Teaching Award and will receive $3,800 for her classroom. The award supports AE faculty who primarily teach at the undergraduate level and have shown extraordinary encouragement and support to students. It will be given annually at the discretion of the AE Chair. 

“Kelly exemplifies the spirit of this award through her expertise, unwavering dedication, and innovative teaching style,” AE Chair Mitchell Walker shared. “Her commitment inspires and transforms her students, making her a great example of the type of faculty in AE.”

Griendling, who has been teaching since 2013, has received numerous teaching awards. In 2021, she received the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll. The next year, she was honored with the College of Engineering Women in Engineering Faculty Teaching Award, and in 2023, she received the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace.

Read the full story here.