News & Events

02-02-23

Michael Stramenga, Aerospace graduate student, and Kevin Yu, Materials Science graduate student, have been selected as affiliates for the Keck Institute of Space Studies (KISS). KISS Affiliates are an ongoing cohort of campus graduate students and postdocs who are seen as the next generation of space exploration leaders. KISS Affiliates are provided with unique experiences with industry CEOs, astronauts, space mission leaders, NASA leadership, and world-renowned space exploration researchers.

Tags: APhMS GALCIT KISS Michael Stramenga Kevin Yu

09-20-11

The Caltech Space Challenge was a Keck Institute for Space Studies workshop led by Aerospace graduate students Prakhar Mehrotra and Jon Mihaly. It brought together two teams of students from around the world to develop plans for deep-space missions that could carry humans to an asteroid and back. Both teams planned missions to an asteroid known as 1999 AO10, which is between 45 and 100 meters in length and is thought to have a relatively slow spin rate. Since relatively little is known about this asteroid, both teams called for robotic precursor missions that could gather information needed to help plan the later human mission. The competing mission descriptions, from Team Explorer and Team Voyager, were so evenly matched that the jurors had to use three different judging methods to finally settle on a winner. In the end, the victory and shiny new iPads went to Team Voyager. [Caltech Feature] [NPR Broadcast]

Tags: GALCIT KISS Prakhar Mehrotra Jon Mihaly Space Challenge

07-24-11

Marin Kobilarov, a W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, was a finalist for the best paper award in the 2011 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference - his paper is entitled Cross-Entropy Randomized Motion Planning .  The conference committee solicited original papers in all areas of robotics and followed a highly selective review process designed to select the best work of its kind in every category. Dr. Kobilarov is working on discrete geometric motion control of autonomous vehicles with Professors Mathieu Desbrun and Sergio Pellegrino.  [Read the paper]

Tags: honors GALCIT CMS Mathieu Desbrun Sergio Pellegrino Marin Kobilarov KISS postdocs