State Omniscience for Cooperative Local Catalog Maintenance of Close Proximity Satellite Systems

Resiliency in multi-agent system navigation is reliant on the inherent ability of the system to withstand, overcome, or recover from adverse conditions and disturbances. In large part, resiliency is achieved through reducing the impact of critical failure points to the success and/or performance of the system. In this view, decentralized multi-agent architectures have become an attractive solution for multi-agent navigation, but decentralized architectures place the burden of information acquisition directly on the agents themselves. In fact, the design of distributed estimators has been a growing interest to enable complex multi-sensor/multi-agent tasks. In such scenarios, it is important that each local estimator converges to the true global system state - a quality known as state omniscience. Most previous related work has focused on the design of such systems under varying assumptions on the graph topology with simplified information fusion schemes. Contrarily, this work introduces characterizations of state omniscience under generalized graph topologies and generalized information fusion schemes. State omniscience is discussed analogously to observability from classical control theory; and a collection of necessary and sufficient conditions for a distributed estimator to be state omniscient are presented. This dissertation discusses this phenomena in terms of an on-orbit scenarios dubbed the local catalog maintenance problem and the cooperative local catalog maintenance problem. The goal of each agent is to maintain their catalog of all bodies (objects and agents) within this neighborhood through onboard angles-only measurements and cooperative communication with the other agents. A central supervisor selects the target body for each agent, a local controller tracks the selected target body for each agent, and a local estimator coalesces both an agent\u27s measurements and state estimates provided by neighboring agents within the communication graph. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the supervisor\u27s ability to select an appropriate target subject to an uncertainty threshold, the controller\u27s ability to track the selected target, and the estimator\u27s ability to maintain an accurate and precise estimate of each of the bodies in the local environment

Flight Operations Quality Assurance Analysis for Contingency Scenarios of SpaceShipTwo using ERAU’s Suborbital Space Flight Simulator

This project addresses critical flight contingencies for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital vehicle to analyze and evaluate the feasibility of its flight operations. The research suborbital data was obtained using the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Suborbital Space Flight Simulator. These suborbital flight profiles were simulated after drop from WhiteKnightTwo for several contingency scenarios, such as on-trajectory failures (thrust termination), fuel dumping, loss of vector control, and tumbling turn failures. The simulated data obtained from these flights will be used as a preliminary step for future developments of flight planning to better estimate the space flight corridors during descent and ascent trajectories. This data will provide flight and ground safety operators with key information to better understand hazard and safety risks and establish pertinent procedures and preventive measures when the vehicle goes through the National Air Space (NAS). Matlab and Excel softwares were used to generate graphical representations of various parameters, such as altitude, fuel mass, range, angle of attack, flight path angle, pitch, G-load, and mission elapsed time to assess the hazard and safety risk of SpaceShipTwo suborbital flight operations for each contingency scenario

On the impact of dimension-eight SMEFT operators on Higgs measurements

Using the production of a Higgs boson in association with a $W$ boson as a test case, we assess the impact of dimension-8 operators within the context of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. Dimension-8--SM-interference and dimension-6-squared terms appear at the same order in an expansion in $1/\Lambda$, hence dimension-8 effects can be treated as a systematic uncertainty on the new physics inferred from analyses using dimension-6 operators alone. To study the phenomenological consequences of dimension-8 operators, one must first determine the complete set of operators that can contribute to a given process. We accomplish this through a combination of Hilbert series methods, which yield the number of invariants and their field content, and a step-by-step recipe to convert the Hilbert series output into a phenomenologically useful format. The recipe we provide is general and applies to any other process within the dimension $\le 8$ Standard Model Effective Theory. We quantify the effects of dimension-8 by turning on one dimension-6 operator at a time and setting all dimension-8 operator coefficients to the same magnitude. Under this procedure and given the current accuracy on $\sigma(pp \to h\,W^+)$, we find the effect of dimension-8 operators on the inferred new physics scale to be small, $\mathcal O(\text{few}\,\%)$, with some variation depending on the relative signs of the dimension-8 coefficients and on which dimension-6 operator is considered. The impact of the dimension-8 terms grows as $\sigma(pp \to h\,W^+)$ is measured more accurately or (more significantly) in high-mass kinematic regions. We provide a FeynRules implementation of our operator set to be used for further more detailed analyses.Comment: More operator coefficient choices explored, bugs in FeynRules implementation correcte

A Statistical Approach for Commercial Space Vehicle Integration into the National Airspace System

This paper explores commercial space vehicle (CSV) suborbital flight trajectories in the temporal and spatial domains for CSV integration into the National Airspace System. The research data was collected via the Suborbital Space Flight Simulator (SSFS) housed in the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach campus, and analyzed using an original MATLAB data analytics tool. This study primarily focuses on statistical trends observed in previously simulated flights supported by three Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) campaigns comprised of 34 flights and 19 control flights, and to identify relevant milestones in the CSV flight path. The correlations found in these flight milestones are key for the development of a predictive model for flight and ground safety operators, and reduce the necessity for extensively restricted flight hazard areas. In this paper, the PoSSUM and Control flights are compared to evaluate the deviation caused by different thrust operations conducted by the Scientist Astronaut Candidates (SACs) to enhance scientific data collection in the mesosphere. Preliminary results show the adjustments made by the PoSSUM flights have little effect in the domain with a mean difference of 10.4 seconds in time-of-flight (ToF) outside of the NAS, and a noticeable effect in the spatial domain with a mean difference of 9.3 km in the descent threshold range

Exact SMEFT formulation and expansion to O(v4/Λ4)\mathcal{O}(v^4/\Lambda^4)

The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) theoretical framework is increasingly used to interpret particle physics measurements and constrain physics beyond the Standard Model. We investigate the truncation of the effective-operator expansion using the geometric formulation of the SMEFT, which allows exact solutions, up to mass-dimension eight. Using this construction, we compare the exact solution to the expansion at ${\mathcal{O}}(v^2/\Lambda^2)$, partial ${\mathcal{O}}(v^4/\Lambda^4)$ using a subset of terms with dimension-6 operators, and full ${\mathcal{O}}(v^4/\Lambda^4)$, where $v$ is the vacuum expectation value and $\Lambda$ is the scale of new physics. This comparison is performed for general values of the coefficients, and for the specific model of a heavy U(1) gauge field kinetically mixed with the Standard Model. We additionally determine the input-parameter scheme dependence at all orders in $v/\Lambda$, and show that this dependence increases at higher orders in $v/\Lambda$.Comment: 42 pages, 9 figure

Electrical and Magnetic Properties of High Temperature Superconductors Using Varying forms of Data Acquisition

High temperature superconductors (HTS) are materials that display superconducting properties at temperatures above that of liquid nitrogen. Possible applications and ease of use in a typical physics laboratory make them interesting systems to study. In this experiment we measured the critical temperatures of two samples made of different HTS materials. We also devised a method that makes taking data automated

A Comparison of Mechanical and Electrical Wind-Powered Water Pumps

Worldwide, 783 million people do not have access to clean water; 319 million of them reside in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this region, the transportation of water from its source to its point-of-use can be arduous to complete using current methods. The men and women in developing communities must exert considerable effort to retrieve the few gallons of water they need to survive. Due to the lack of infrastructure and no external source of energy, new methods to transport the water must be capable of generating their own energy. The Archimedes Initiative has set out to identify a mechanically powered pump that performs as effectively as an electrical pump based on the following criteria: a 5-10L/min flow rate, 1-mile flow distance, and 150 ft. vertical head distance. The team will conduct research into the efficiency and performance of both hybrid and mechanical systems. At the project’s conclusion, The Archimedes Initiative plans to have a fully functioning wind-powered water pump capable of meeting the design criteria. The project is currently ongoing and much progress has been made towards developing preliminary designs and a viable prototype. After several iterations of design review and redesign, the team plans to begin construction of a prototype in January and testing is scheduled for February 2017. A fully functioning and usable prototype will be complete by the conclusion of the 2016-2017 school year

Educational Technology and Distance Supervision in Counselor Education

The authors used a nonexperimental descriptive design to examine the prevalence of distance supervision in counselor education programs, educational technology used in supervision, training on technology in supervision, and participants\u27 (N = 673) perceptions of legal and ethical compliance. Program policies are recommended to guide the training and use of technology in supervision