November 6, 1995

NASA honors team from N.C. State

Most young people interested in space travel settle for gazing longingly at the stars or watching movies like Apollo 13. Two graduate students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at N.C. State University have gone further by designing and fabricating crucial sensors for a NASA experiment in space.

For their efforts, Veena Misra, Brian Hornung, electrical and computer engineering professor Dr. Jimmie Wortman and Biomedical Microsensors Laboratory manager Bruce Ash were recently presented an Experiment Team Excellence Award at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA.

The team--assisted by Joan O'Sullivan, assistant manager of the Microelectronics Laboratory at N.C. State--worked on very short notice to design, fabricate, test and deliver 48 sensors for the Orbital Meteoroid Debris Counting (OMDC) Experiment for the Clementine Interstage Adaptor Spacecraft launched in February 1994.

The two students were very well instructed about the importance of making and delivering the sensors on schedule. During a camping excursion, Wortman called from the road at pre-established times to check on the project's progress.

"The project was put together quickly," Hornung said. "We designed and made the sensors in about a month--we stayed up till 5:00 a.m. a couple of nights."

The data from OMDC, affectionately dubbed "O My Darling Clementine," has been analyzed by NASA, and scientists expect the results to yield vital information for deep space travel in the future. Spacecraft for missions to outer planets will pass by Earth for gravity assistance, and knowing the degree to which the space around Earth is cluttered will help designers engineer a resilient spacecraft.

According to Wortman, small particles can damage spacecraft to varying degrees--a thumb-sized particle can go through a spacecraft due to high velocity while particles much smaller can erode the surface of a spacecraft and damage sensitive instruments. The debris can be anything from interplanetary dust to man-made space trash such as old satellites and flecks of paint from space vehicles.

To establish the amount of debris near Earth, the interstage satellite, which was about the size of a microwave oven, separated from Clementine and then maintained an elliptical orbit between the Earth and the Moon for about a month. The 1.5-by-3 inch metal-oxide-silicon (MOS) sensors, which were positioned in a ring around the satellite's rim, detected the number, position in space, angle and frequency of debris impacts. At the end of the experiment, the satellite burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.

Misra said the experiment is a success because the team developed a baseline process for fabricating the sensors and proved that they are a viable experimental tool in space. Jim Jones, the experiment manager at NASA Langley Research Center, said that the N.C. State team's work was extremely important and that the sensors were the heart of the OMDC experiment.

"They were essentially the critical factor with regards to the program," Jones said. "We're using the data to support current NASA missions."

Other students at N.C. State now manufacture the MOS sensors, which are used regularly on satellites. Misra and Hornung are proud of their role in developing the technology.

"I couldn't help but think about it when watching Apollo 13. In the movie, it seemed very challenging to go into space," Hornung said. "I feel as if I contributed to that kind of effort--but on a smaller scale."

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