Profiles

When, I heard recently about the group of scientists in Boulder , Colorado , who have been heading the New Horizons program, I thought that perhaps, the small town on the foothills of the Rockies has just recently become the new spot for the planetary scientists to hang out, design and build cool things like spacecrafts and a dust counter. I traveled to Boulder to talk to some of the scientists who have been involved with the mission. I however soon found out that Boulder has had a long history of being “the” place for training of some of the best astro- and planetary scientists in the country. Boulder houses many great institutions such as University of Colorado Boulder , Laboratory of Atmospheric Space and Physics (LASP) and Southwest Research Institute's (SWRI).

In Boulder , at LASP, I met with Dr. Horanyi, professor of atmospheric and space physics at University of Colorado, Boulder, and four students who have worked on the Student Dust Counter (SDC). SDC was funded as an Education and Public outreach project for the New Horizon's mission. New Horizon's Priniciple Investigator Dr. Alan Stern and Dr. Horanyi felt that a student-lead instrument could be a significant experience for the students involved.

Shadi: You have the word “dust” in the name of the instrument, Can you tell us why the instrument is called Dust Counter and what it will be doing on the board of New Horizons?

Mihaly Horanyi: Dust is small solid particles, with the radius comparable in size (or smaller) to a human hair,; it's micron and sub-micron small particles. The reason we are interested in measuring dust is that we live in a world of dust. We know very little about the dust disk environment we live in. We know about our solar system and other planets, but in between the planets the space is not empty. It is filled with cosmic dust. We know about the cosmic dust around the planets because we can take images using telescopes. However, to have a really good observation and understanding of this dust, we can not do it from here on the ground. Studying the dust density around other planets tell us if what we see there is consistent to what we have learned in the past from our observations down here and also if they are consistent with our own dust disk environment.

Shadi: What could the information you get from the SDC tell us about our solar system and Pluto?

Mihaly Horanyi: We start measuring as soon as we leave Earth, so we will have information about the density of dust around the spacecraft trajectory from Earth to Pluto. It will not be uniform. There will be places where there is a lot of dust and places where it will be a small amount of dust, reflecting, and the sources of dust as well as transport of dust from one place to another in the solar system. If you read our website this is what we have tried to visualize for non-scientists with the analogy with a truck carrying sand on a highway and as it speeds up or slows down the cloud of dust behind it changes. Even though the dust particles have short half lives, there is always a cloud of dust behind the truck. So by measuring the amount of dust, we can figure out the sources of the dust, the rate of transport as it is transported from one place to another in our solar system.

Shadi: How long did it take you to design and build SDC?

Mihaly Horanyi: We had to deliver the SDC about a year ago, because it had to be integrated into the spacecraft and verified that it works. To design, build and deliver it took us over two years. The design was based on an existing technology. We are using thin plastic films. When dust particles collide with the film, it will generate an electrical signal. Every signal tells us that we have a hit and the size of that signal tells us how big that particle was. The detectors like this had been built before at the University of Chicago . Researchers there had built several of these and they kindly assisted us with building our counter, improving on the technology and even making it much bigger and more sophisticated for New Horizons. Initially, we naively thought it was a simple technology, but of course nothing is simple if you want to fly it in space.

Shadi: How many students have you had working on the SDC?

Mihaly Horanyi: It started with a single student. It started with just the idea of what kind of instrument, we should build; then the idea grew and the number of students grew to 2, 3 and 4. At the peak of the project we had about 20 students. They came from aerospace engineering, mechanical, and electrical engineering. We even had a business major student. So they came from all over campus.

Shadi: I noticed on your website, that you also worked with the Max Planck Institute in Germany . What was their role on the SDC?

Mihaly Horanyi: The Cadillacs of dust detectors come from Heidelberg , Germany . These are very sophisticated devices. They have been flown on Ulysses, Cassini, and Galileo. They are very large and expensive dust detectors. The colleagues at the Max Planck Institute have developed a dust accelerator where you achieve high speed for dust particles, so that's good place to test your device and instrument. You know what the size and speed of the particles which are hitting your detector so you can calibrate your instrument. That was a great opportunity for us and the Max Planck Institute graciously offered their facilities for testing and calibration of the SDC.

Shadi: Where was the instrument actually built?

Mihaly Horanyi: Everything was built at LASP—from the first designs to the papers and the prototype to the actual instrument. There were certain tests which we had to do to qualify as a flight instrument. We had to put the instrument through specific tests such as heat and cold. We also had to make sure that the instrument could survive strong mechanical vibrations on the spacecraft. That was done at Ball Aerospace here in Boulder . We verified that it could survive all the testing. The instrument was then delivered.

Shadi: Thank you and we look forward to hearing more in the future about the information you gather from SDC.

Conversation with Students

Chelsea Bryant worked on the SDC as a graduate student working on a Master's degree She worked on the detector design and fabrication—working on prototypes of the dust detector and testing of the final instrument which is now on the spacecraft. She now works in the calibration group, testing all scientific instruments that are being built at LASP.

Beth Grogan worked on both ground and flight software for the SDC. She has also been in charge of the ground testing as well as writing procedure and coordinating with the spacecraft people to make sure the instrument is working properly. She will still be in charge of ensuring the instrument is working when it is in flight. At LASP, she continues writing flight software for other projects.

Ervin Krauss was an undergraduate aerospace engineering student when he was hired to work on the SDC. His primary responsibility was on the electronic box, working with other electrical engineers on the layout of the circuit boards and the electronic box enclosure. He then stayed on to help other students through testing and delivery of the instrument. Ervin is now working as a mechanical engineer at LASP while finishing a master's degree in aerospace at University of Colorado , Boulder.

James Mack is a mechanical engineer at LASP who worked on the SDC. His primary work was on the support structure for the detector itself. He was also involved with analysis and design for the SDC. He is doing very similar things now on other projects at LASP.

Shadi: How do you think this experience has helped you both with your school and the degrees you were working on at the time; also, how has it helped in terms of professional experience?

James Mack: I think it was an invaluable experience, since unlike your school work, you get into the neaty gritty of things every day—solving problems and doing real time work. You have the ability to work in groups and on teams and have that opportunity which other students don't have.

Ervin Krauss: I really agree with what James said. You come to work and things get done. You learn to divide your time efficiently, since your school work also needs to get done. It adds a structure to your work and gives you the type of experience which many students don't have.

Beth Grogan: When you are in a classroom, and you are given problems, usually the answers are in the back of the book, in this case, there are no answers anywhere, and you have to work through the problem to find the answer. This is the type of experience which most students never get. Working here actually helped me with one of my projects, actually my senior project. We had to do a design and we had already done a design here. So I knew how to do it and I helped the other students because I had done a project. I thought it was a cool thing because I got to use my work to help my school work.

James Mack: The type of problems you see in class like Beth's are largely well-structured, and usually have one solution. Here there are several solutions, good and bad solutions. There are areas of gray and you have to work through them to find the best solution.

Chelsea Bryant: I had several classes which were very similar. I had a class which was called spacecraft design, and another one was payload design which dealt with very similar things, but until you actually applied it you didn't really understand as well. I think I got to understand a little better than a lot of people in class, when we were talking about some similar issues. Also, with this experience, I think the job fields will be much bigger for us with this experience

Beth Grogan: Also, another advantage was that we get to know a lot of people in the field which we would not have gotten otherwise.

Shadi: What are your longer term goals; let's say for the next five years?

Ervin Krauss: I would like to perhaps stay at school and get another master's degree. I would definitely like to stay in this sector in aerospace engineering. I would also like to travel.

James Mack: I think engineering is so neat because there are so many areas in which you can apply yourself. I am still refining my skills in so many areas and as I do that I think I would like to branch out to electrical and software [engineering] and possibly management and working with teams. There are so many areas you can work in. I see myself working here for a long time and never getting board.

Beth Grogan: I plan to go back to school and get a master's degree. I have not quite decided what I want to study yet, perhaps software related, may be software and hardware related. I definitely want to stay in this industry.

Chelsea Bryant: Right now, I am working on testing designs of other engineers so I would like to expand and get to design instruments as well. I like the science part of it, like, why we are building that specific instrument.

Shadi: There is a lot of talk that in the US we are behind other countries when it comes to science and engineering and having our students interested in these fields. Here you are scientists and engineers. How do you think this project could trigger the interest of the students who are now in middle schools and high schools so that they could go on to follow your foot steps?

Chelsea Bryant: I think there is such a stigma that scientists and engineers are so nerdy and have no life. [We do it] by just showing that we are such an eclectic group of students and we don't fit into that stigma. You don't have to be a nerd to be an engineer and you can also make a lot of money.

Beth Grogan: Also, when I was in high school, I remember I liked math and science and then I was told by someone to study engineering. I had no idea what that meant. Showing students a project like this could help them to understand–so, that's what engineering means! That's what you're actually going to do. I remember even after taking classes in college I still did not know exactly what I was going to do. This helps to bring out an abstract concept in engineering to an actual real thing you can relate to.

Shadi: Do you find it easy or difficult?

Beth Grogan: For me, it is easy because it comes really naturally to me. I think there is a specific type of personality who does engineering.

Ervin Krauss: dedicated

James Mack: It requires a scientific-minded approach. You see problems and look at how to solve them and what the governing physics are behind it. Trying to see things from a really fundamental level. Some people have it and some people don't.

Beth Grogan: Yes, problem solving is really something that you have to like to do.

Ervin Krauss: What I had done in high school, for example, was that we had to find some one in industry to go and see what they were doing. We had a family friend, an engineer, so when I was a junior I had a chance to go and meet with him and get to see what he was doing. I got to see what he was doing and I liked it. By just talking to him I became interested in engineering.

Shadi: Thank you everyone and good luck to you.

For more information Visit:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sdc/