Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER)...annual report, covering our fourth full calendar year of operation, 2014. After the trials of 2013 when many staff left in

Never Stand Still Engineering Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications

Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER)2014 ANNUAL REPORT

Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER)

2014 ANNUAL REPORT

© Australian Centre for Space Engineering ResearchUNSW Sydney NSW 2052AUSTRALIA

Director: Professor Andrew Dempster

T: +61 (2) 9385 6890E: [email protected]

ACSER.UNSW

@ACSERUNSW

ACSER UNSW

f

Cover photo: Taken by UNSW PhD student William Crowe and his BALU-1 stratospheric balloon team as part of

their Global Space Balloon Challenge entry - view above the Warrumbungles, looking at Coonabarabran

ACSER Annual Report 2014 1

Contents

Contents

Director’s Report 2

About ACSER 4

ACSER Objectives 4

ACSER Strategy 5

Supporters 6

Our Research 7YEAR IN REVIEW: Projects 8

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) 8QB50 9SMiLE 10GEMS, GEMS – II and CTD 11Biarri 12

Our Events 13Workshops & Events 14

Other Highlights 22

Media & Publicity 24

Our Students 25Undergraduate Education 26

Postgraduate Coursework 33

Higher Degree Research 35

Our People 37Our People 38

2014 Team Photo 43

2014 Industry Partners and Collaborators 44

Governance 45ACSER Governance Committees 46

Centre Grant Funding 48

Financial Report 49

Publications 51

ACSER Annual Report 20142

This is the fourth Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) annual report, covering our fourth full calendar year of operation, 2014.

After the trials of 2013 when many staff left in the aftermath of the Australian Space Research Program, 2014 was a year of recovery and stabilisation. At the end of 2013, we expected in 2014 to stabilise the size of the team, to deliver QB50, to see Biarri and Bluesat launched, and to re-launch the Satellite Navigation and Positioning (SNAP) Laboratory. The QB50, Biarri and Bluesat programs were all delayed, but the other goals were achieved.

The highlights of the year were the awarding of three Australian Research Council (ARC) projects, two in the Linkage scheme (“Protecting Critical Transport Infrastructure using Hybrid Approaches for Interference and Spoofer Detection and Localisation”, $361,000, and “Rapid Recovery from Radiation-induced Errors in Reconfigurable Hardware”, $232,000) and one Discovery (“Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for Space”, $340,300). These awards confirm the excellence of the work performed by the centre, and enable us to have some confidence in planning the next few years.

Another important funding win was the Capability and Technology Demonstrator Program project (“Geolocation of GPS RF Interference to Support Defence Operations”, ACSER share $300,000) led by our industrial partner GPSat Systems. In both this project and the first of the Linkage projects, we are developing a system to locate the source of interference to satellite navigation with our partners GPSat Systems and the University of Adelaide.

The QB50 project passed CDR, and several other milestones. The payloads all now exist and are largely tested. The bus algorithms are also under development by an undergraduate team. The SMiLE project built several prototypes and is due for launch on the international space station in 2015.

We investigated the use of GNSS, inertial and ultra-wideband sensors in a consultancy with Thales in an effort to solve the positioning problem for cooperative intelligent transport systems, which promises to be a significant area of research as driverless cars become more prevalent.

An exciting development in 2014 was the founding of Delta V, a space business accelerator for Sydney. This was an initiative of ACSER, University of Sydney, Saber Astronautics and Launchbox. The aim of Delta V is to create a space business ecosystem so that a sustainable Australian space industry can be bootstrapped in Sydney.

Events continued to be an area of impact for ACSER. The main 2014 event was the relaunch of the SNAP Lab and the accompanying workshop, GNSS Futures, in July, which hosted international keynotes and attracted a significant national attendance. This relaunch formalises the relationship between the GNSS research groups in the Schools of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, and Civil and Environmental Engineering. Once again, we hosted the SIAA Executive and combined that with a public lecture by Dr David Williams, Executive Director, National Facilities and Collections, CSIRO. We hosted talks by many Australian speakers as well as international visitors such as the CEO of Deep Space Industries, and visitors from University College London and the European Space Agency.

The new Master of Engineering Science in Satellite Systems Engineering degree was launched. Three courses ran

Director’s Report

Prof. Andrew Dempster, ACSER Director, introducing guest speaker Mr David Gump (CEO Deep Space Industries), 11 March 2014.


in 2014 and the initial cohort was nine students. As the course establishes itself, we expect healthy growth in these numbers.

2014 saw a significant change of direction in Bluesat’s undergraduate engagement in space. The students demonstrated their space robotics capability at Arkaroola, began a balloon launch program and began working on cubesat development.

The coming year presents some interesting challenges. Some of these are welcome, with the launch of so many new funded projects, but others are less so, such as the second move of premises in the centre’s short life as building G17 is renovated, with the promise of a third move later on when we return.

Prof Demspter introducing David Gump, CEO of Deep Space Industries at a public lecture

in March 2014, co-hosted by the National Space Society of Australia

Professor Andrew DempsterDirectorAustralian Centre for Space Engineering Research


About ACSER

The Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) was launched at the University of New South Wales on the 22 November 2010 by former astronaut Dr. Jan Davis. The centre aims to establish UNSW as a significant player in increasing Australia’s capabilities in space.

The centre draws on the huge expertise of Australia’s largest Engineering faculty. ACSER resides in the School of Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at UNSW and interacts with most of the Schools in that Faculty: Mining Engineering, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering as well as the Engineering and Information Technology School of UNSW Canberra. Collaborations have been developed with the Faculties of Science, Business, Law, and Arts and Social Sciences. Future opportunities are being examined with Chemical Engineering.

Current projects include the QB50 CubeSat program, where 50 CubeSats are being developed around the world for ionospheric monitoring and also to carry payloads for the individual satellite developers. The Biarri project will carry ACSER GPS receivers on its cubesat constellation led by the US Air Force Research Laboratory. The new Masters in Satellite Systems Engineering has begun enrolling students.

ACSER regularly organises workshops and seminars on a range of space-related topics of interest to the wider space community. In 2013, ACSER hosted the world’s first Off-Earth Mining Forum, co-hosted the Australian Space Science Conference, hosted three external workshops as well as several internal to UNSW.

The year ahead offers many opportunities and challenges, including delivery of outcomes in several projects, the relaunch of the SNAP Lab, and new research funding initiatives.

ACSER Objectives

To provide national leadership for Australian space engineering research.

Vision

To develop space capabilities relevant to Australia’s needs through research, innovation and

education.

Purpose


ACSER Strategy

Our Vision

Engage theCommunity

Ensure MarketSuitability

Resources

Pursue Excellence &Innovation

Educate

Our Purpose

Capabilities

To provide national leadership for Australian space engineering research.

To foster collaborations between researchers, industry and government and to nurture links between our national and international

partners to achieve Australia’s space ambitions.

To develop space capabilities relevant to Australia’s needs through research,

innovation and education.

In pursuing the vision, ACSER upholds the principles underpinning its foundation.

Promote collaborations

between ACSER, groups

with space capabilities

and the Australian market

for space services,

technologies and

expertise.

Pursue programs and

activities that fit the

needs, expectations and

constraints of the

domestic and international

space markets.

Develop a funding and operational model that guarantees ACSER’s long-term viability.

Create and transfer new

knowledge in space

capabilities, technologies

and applications

Raise Australian

awareness of issues and

developments in space,

and educate a new

generation of space

professionals.

Advance Australia’s space aspirations

Enhance the reputation of UNSW

Promote collaboration between the schools, faculties

and campuses of UNSW

Enable access to facilities for ACSER collaborators.

Strengthen the ACSER expertise base through strategic recruitment and post-graduate education.

ACSER Strategy


Supporters

2014 saw a shift in the Centre funding model, with a renewed focus on sponsorships and donations to keep the Centre operations and events up and running. We owe great thanks to GPSat Systems and the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA) for their donations and to the NSSA and The Institution of Engineering and Technology for sponsoring and collaborating on outreach and research events throughout the year.

Internally we would also like to thank Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and the Faculty of Engineering who have assisted us both financially and with in-kind support throughout the year.

LEFT: Prof Andrew Dempster introducing Deep Space Industries CEO David Gump at the joint ACSER/NSSA public lectureBELOW LEFT: The IET Banner being displayed at the registration desk at the July 2014 GNSS Futures eventBELOW: Prof Stephen Foster, Head of School of Civil and Environmental Engineering speaking at the SNAP Re-Launch in front of both the Civil banner and Electrical Engineering banner

NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY O F AU S T R A L I A LT D

OurResearch


YEAR IN REVIEW: Projects

Triggered by recent developments in vehicular safety, driverless vehicles etc., cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) has become a major research area. Over the past decade ACSER has developed a strong heritage in multi-sensor integration for land navigation, as evidenced by numerous high quality journal publications. ACSER has focussed on enhancing accuracy and resil-ience of GNSS-based navigation in vehicular applications by combining GNSS with other on-board sensors. The exploitation of channel parameters from vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications has resulted in significant improve-ment in not only positioning accuracy but also availability, allowing resilient navigation in semi-urban environments where typical standalone GPS receivers will intermittently fail. Expanding this idea to networked vehicles enhances the overall positioning accuracy of the entire network of vehicles. ACSER’s prominence in this field of research attracted the attention of Thales Alenia Space France (TAS), who approached us to study the benefits of integrating Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), GNSS and V2V sensors, and how redundancy in such multi-sensor integrations mitigate the signal distortions due to multipath and Non-Line-of-Sight by rejecting measurements from effected signals. The study attracted a €40,000 consultancy fee from TAS and concluded that using non-conventional estimators can indeed significantly reduce positioning errors. It is hoped that further investigations using a modified particle-filter to improve capability in rejecting distorted signals can be carried out in the future.

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Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS)

ABOVE: Modelling GPS signals that a vehicle (red box) sees from two perspective, a top view (top) and side view (bottom). The vehicle can simultaneously observe both good (blue lines) and misleading (green and red lines) signals, resulting in poor positioning solution in environments with high rise buildings.

BELOW: A simulation of vehicles travelling in an urban environment with high rise buildings of various shapes. A vehicle (red) can share information with neighbouring vehicles (blue) in its vicinity, but not vehicles (black) too far away.


QB50

QB50 is a network 50 CubeSats that is due to be launched at the end of 2016 into a ‘string-of-pearls’ configuration. The orbit will be a sun synchronous dawn-dusk orbit with a low starting altitude (400km) allowing direct sampling of the thermosphere. The CubeSat constellation will comprise a mix of atmospheric double CubeSats and double or triple CubeSats for science and technology demonstration.

There are three Australian CubeSats being developed to participate in this project, with UNSW providing one, ‘UNSW EC0’. UNSW EC0 is a 2U CubeSat that will host a ion/neutral mass spectrometer provide by MSSL as well as incorporating three additional payload boards: A new space GPS board (KEA) developed at UNSW; a systems computer board (sel4Bit) running sel4, a robust microkernal operating system developed by NICTA; and a robust FPGA based systems computer board (RUSH). These payloads will allow the investigation of two GPS based remote sensing techniques, radio occultation and GPS reflectometry, as well as demonstration of a variety of error correcting and fault tolerant algorithms on the systems computer boards. In addition to these payloads, UNSW EC0 also incorporates one of the first thermoplastic 3D printed satellite structures (RAMSES) to be flown in space.

During 2014 the UNSW QB50 project completed the Critical Design Review milestone and submitted the Assembly, Integration and Testing Review. The cubesat design progressed, with key developments in: algorithm developed for detumbling, pointing and tracking; operational code written and deployed to the flight controller board; and integration of the major subsystems into a flight configuration. The payload teams made significant progress with; RAMSES completing the structure design and performed finite element simulations

for resonance, steady state loading, sinusoidal and random vibration; the RUSH team progressed flight code development and performed functional testing on the development board, as well as completing the flight PCB design; the seL4bit team manufactured flight model boards, developed flight software and carried out functional testing; and the KEA team developed flight software increasing the capability of the previous generation to incorporate key features to carryout the GNSS remote observation experiments.

In 2014 the CubeSat design reached a detailed level of definition, and procurement of long lead-time items and new technologies got underway. The team is now well established in their roles, and there is a good coverage of required skills. All up there are 28 UNSW and NICTA personnel working on the project. There has been $252,000 of cash committed to the project, and this has leveraged a further $464,000 of in-kind contribution through labour and technology development.

The QB50 mission patch, designed by Dr Barnaby Osborne

Artist’s impression of the QB50: This

image, by PhD student Jendi

Kepple, has been used by UNSW

in advertising and by the QB50

consortium on its home page.


SMiLE

This project aims to carry out an experimental investigation into the dynamics of droplet production in a reduced gravity environment onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The experiment has been designed to interface with and occupy a 1.5U (15cm x 10cm x 10cm) slot in the nano labs rack provided by NanoRacks. The investigation will focus on clearly identifying the dynamics of a newly identified drop formation process present in reduced gravity environments (akin to a dripping tap in reduced gravity). The experiment comprises a flow chamber (where the drops are formed and observed), a syringe pump to provide the flow, two control valves, two USB cameras and a microcontroller. The assembly is housed in a rotating drum, allowing the system to be spun and introducing a centrifugal force to separate the fluid from the air in the flow chamber. Flow rate control allows adjustment of fluidic parameters such as Reynolds and Weber number. Cameras monitor the fluid flow into the chamber and provide the principle data output. Outcomes from this investigation will be the experimental identification of the measure of the chaos present in this system and a refinement of the understanding of the transitions into and out of this flow regime. Applications of this work are relevant to industries that rely on drop on demand processes such as ink-jet, PCB, flexible electronics and genome printing.

There are two partner organisations key to this project; 1. The International Space University (ISU) in France and 2. NanoRacks in the US. From these institutions this project has a current team of four academics, one researcher and two undergraduates. However, this project has been running for the past 5 years and has had the prior contribution of three other academics, 2 researchers and 17 undergraduates over this time. Throughout the duration, the project has attracted $110,000 in real terms leveraging approximately a further $255,000 in in-kind contributions.

In 2014 the experiment design was reviewed by Nanoracks and manufacture of the bespoke subsystems was initiated. Due to the compact and complex nature of this experiment, 3D manufacturing techniques are heavily employed to create complex components. The preparation of three versions (two flight models and one engineering model) of the experiment has been

started. Functional testing of the key fluid systems was carried out. In addition a custom control board based on a Raspberry Pi was developed along with software designed to control the experiment in space. The launch contract was reviewed by Nanoracks and ISU with experiment included in the launch manifest of the SpaceX CRS-9 mission. The project is aiming for a Q3 2015 handover of flight hardware for an expected December 2015 launch and operations.

Photos captured during earlier work involving drop-tower testing performed by Dr Barnaby Osborne


GPS has become ubiquitous in daily life, to an extent that the position, and often more importantly, the time delivered by GPS has become embedded in an increasing number of critical systems. However, given their low received power levels, GPS signals are very susceptible to interference from either intentional or unintentional sources. With the modern world becoming ever more reliant on GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), GNSS has itself become a critical infrastructure and hence alleviating its vulnerability to interference has become of paramount importance.

This Australian Research Council (ARC) sponsored Linkage project partnering ACSER, the University of Adelaide and GPSat Systems looked at the use of spatially distributed sensor nodes to rapidly detect and geo-locate interference in real-time in a given area.

During 2014 the team has successfully completed the work on the first ARC, GEMS, and secured a follow on three year ARC Linkage grant, GEMS II, to further extend the capability of GEMS to pinpoint attempts to jam or fake GPS signals (spoofers), before either has serious consequences. This work will start in 2015 and will look at advanced signal processing algorithms and techniques to deal with weak interference and spoofers.

Concurrently, during 2014 the industrial partner GPSat Systems was awarded Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) program funding and is working closely with ACSER and the University of Adelaide to further develop the system. This work will start in early 2015.

GEMS, GEMS – II and CTD


Namuru V3.2A GPS Receiver Board

The Biarri program represents the first serious application of GPS technology that has been under development at UNSW and its partners for over a decade. The project required the delivery of four Global Positioning System receivers to Defence Science and Technology Organisation’s (DSTO) Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division (ISRD) for integration into three Boeing Colony-2 3U (shoebox sized) CubeSat spacecraft at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. UNSW has also provided full receiver and software documentation, as well as providing advice regarding operation of the receiver.

The design of the current generation bespoke Namuru GPS receivers has ensured that the demanding requirements of reliably navigating in low-earth-orbit, providing centimetre level relative positioning between the three spacecraft and 20ns accuracy timing signals have

been achieved. The receiver offers in-field upgrades of both firmware and field-programmable-gate-array designs, thereby minimizing operational risk and improving receiver flexibility to perform other GPS related experiments.

In 2014, the nature of the Biarri project changed, with a single Biarri Point cubesat scheduled for launch 2015 and a three element Biarri Squad constellation in the following year. Assembly, integration and test (AIT) activities at the Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL) in New Mexico were nearing completion at the end of 2014. ACSER engineers at UNSW have been actively supporting DSTO and AFRL in order to ensure this essential activity is completed on schedule. ACSER assisted DSTO on planning the various experiments to be conducted using the spacecraft. It is expected that once the spacecraft are in orbit, ACSER will provide ongoing support.

Biarri

OurEvents


YEAR IN REVIEW: Workshops & Events

NSSA Space Talks:

Prospecting and harvesting asteroids to serve expanding markets in space

11th March 2014

With several billionaires now operating or building breakthrough new launch systems, markets in space will rapidly expand beyond the current $300 billion industry. Deep Space Industries starts by carrying out asteroid scouting missions for national space agencies, conducting technology-development flight testing for them, and serving media/sponsorship buyers. Launching anything to high Earth orbit costs $17 million/ton, so even cheap commodities like propellant become enormously valuable once in space. DSI will be the “local source” of commodities that otherwise would have to be launched from Earth. Presented by David Gump, CEO of Deep Space Industries.

David leads interactions with space agencies, corporate marketers and media companies at DSI. He led the company’s win of two NASA contracts to provide the agency with technical and policy advice on asteroid exploration and harvesting. Previously David was president of Astrobotic Technology for the development of lunar resources, winning $12 million in NASA technology development contracts and putting a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle under contract for a Moon mission. While president of Transformational Space Corp., NASA selected t/Space to provide it with policy advice and

technical development for its return to the Moon. t/Space was the only corporation given full funding in the second phase of that program. In addition, David produced the first TV commercial filmed on the International Space Station, after selling the concept and negotiating the access rights. He also has created space entertainment software and the distribution channels that saw it sold by Walmart, Best Buy, and the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

How the Ukraine Crisis will shape US Space activity in the next 10 years

30th October 2014

In this talk, NSSA representative Wayne Short addressed the reasons why recent events in the Crimea may force the USA into develop new rocket engines for space missions.

Wayne Short has University degrees in both engineering and information technology. He grew up in Sydney in the 1960’s where as a child he was enthralled with the space exploration achievements of America and the Soviet Union in the race to first land on the moon. He is currently president of the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA) and also co-chair of the Australian Space Research Conference (ASRC). The NSSA is a not-for-profit advocacy organisation whose goal is to “Create a Space-faring Civilisation”. With members across the country; the NSSA runs local chapter meetings to the public as well as organises conferences on behalf of the NSSA for Educators (the Australian Space Research Conference) and Business, Industry and government

(Australian Space Development Conference).ABOVE & BELOW: Photos from the David Gump DSI talk on March 11th.


Delta-V Launch at CeBIT 5th - 7th May 2014

As a Delta-V Space Enterprise Accelerator founding member, ACSER was present at this year’s CeBIT exhibition in an effort to provide national leadership for Australian space engineering research by fostering collaborations between researchers, industry and government and to nurture links between our national and international partners to achieve Australia’s space ambitions.

Delta-V has received support from the NSW Department of Trade and Industry who also sponsored our presence at CeBIT.

THE PITCH:

Delta-V – Australia’s first Space Startup Accelerator

Space – a US$360bn / annum global industry – is being disrupted by rapid advances in technology, sys-tem agility, and generational change. Massive 10-ton satellites costing $500m to build and launch are be-ing replaced by flocks of cheap nanosatellites, huge waterfall-style risk-managed engineering projects are being replaced by lean experiments in hardware and software tolerant to a fail-fast approach. NASA now sees itself as an incubator of commercial space companies. Digital Culture is taking over space.

Australia has the very best talent: world class IP and skills in robotics, navigation, machine learning, system design, you name it. We can combine our unique geopolitical and cultural position to seize a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create multiple $100m Space companies, and multiple $bn spinoff companies in high-tech engineering, agile manufac-turing, biotech, machine intelligence, robotics, and a host of other 21st century industries.

Space Tech teams need somewhere to begin their start-up journey.

Delta-V: supporting the very best Australian Space talent.

Photos from the CeBIT exhibition, 3-5th May.



GNSS Futures Workshop and SNAP Lab Re-Launch 7th - 8th July 2014

PREVIOUS PAGE: Photos from the SNAP Re-Launch celebrationBELOW: Photos from Day 1 and 2 of GNSS Futures, featuring Keynote Prof Penina Axelrad from the University of Colorardo, Boulder (bottom left)

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as GPS are becoming embedded in many technologies as critical infrastructure. Society increasingly relies on the services provided by GNSS: from accessing geoservices using a smart phone, to navigating aircraft, to guiding agricultural machinery, to detecting minute shifts in the Earth’s crust, and much more. At a time when new satellite-based positioning systems, such as the next generation US GPS and Russian GLONASS constellations, and the new Chinese BeiDou, Japanese QZSS and European Galileo GNSS are starting to impact users, it is timely that we consider the future of GNSS in Australia and the region. This workshop examined the impact of GNSS for infrastructure, governments, industry and research, and explored the trends in GNSS (and alternative positioning technology) applications and implementation issues.

UNSW has been undertaking world leading research into satellite-based and wireless positioning technologies and applications since the late 1980s. The workshop coincided with the re-launch of UNSW’s renowned Satellite Navigation and Positioning (SNAP) Laboratory, now linking the two schools of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications. Speakers at the workshop were drawn from SNAP’s extensive network of alumni and collaborators.


Off Earth Mining: The Research Questions Workshop22nd July 2014

The aim of this event was to identify researchers in cross-disciplinary fields who might be interested in engaging in the very broad issues relating to off-earth mining. In February 2013, the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at UNSW hosted the highly successful Off-Earth Mining Forum. A number of initiatives resulted, including an application for an ARC Centre of Excellence in Interplanetary Engineering.

In 2014:• Serkan Saydam of the School of Mining Engineering

visited NASA’s JPL in California and Kennedy Space Centre in Florida,

• The CEO of Deep Space Industries, David Gump, presented on the UNSW campus,

• Planetary Resources approached UNSW to discuss collaboration.

In other words, the only two asteroid mining companies, and the two key NASA centres are in discussion with UNSW as to how to advance this initiative. Off-earth mining is an extremely wide emerging research area, and we would like to start establishing niches for UNSW in areas where we have i) track record and ii) ongoing interest. The purpose of this workshop is to break down some of the “big” research questions into more specific questions of interest to UNSW researchers. This means reaching out to academics in Engineering, Science, Business and Law. Some example “big” questions are:

Mission-level questions• Which minerals/ elements should be extracted from

the moon/ Mars/ asteroids? (the role of microgravity geology?)

• Which asteroid(s) should be mined?• What is the design of the mission to the moon/ Mars/

asteroid?• How should such an operation be managed? Risks?

Mining systems process questions• What technologies are needed for prospecting/

exploring/ mapping/ mining/ processing/materials handling/manufacturing? (considering the extreme conditions: vacuum, microgravity, temperature gradients, radiation, lack of water…)

• Can existing terrestrial technologies be used? (Vice versa: will off-earth technologies be of benefit on earth?)

• How can the right level of robotics autonomy be achieved?

• Can bio-mining be used in space?

Applications/ Markets questions• How can fuel be mined from asteroids?• How can solar panels be produced from mined asteroid

materials?

Business questions• How strong is the business case for off-earth mining

operations?• Where will the in-space markets come from and are they

realistic (tourism, satellite refuelling, exploration)?

Legal/Societal questions• Why do we need to consider off-earth mining? (What

problem is it solving?)• Can the space law obstacles be overcome?• Are there environmental issues to be overcome?

An exhaustive list of potential research topics is now on the ACSER PhD Opportunities web page.

Off Earth Mining Grant for UNSW researchers and NASA2 December 2014

UNSW Mining Engineering Associate Professor Serkan Saydam and Professor Andrew Dempster (ACSER & EET, UNSW Australia) have recently been successful in securing a $100,000 grant in collaboration with NASA’s Caltech - Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the topic of Mining on Mars. The aim of this research is to develop an integrated set of risk-based financial and technical models to evaluate multiple Off-Earth Mining scenarios. This quantitative, scenario and simulation based tool will help identify combinations of market variables, technical parameters, and policy levers that will enable the expansion of the global economy into the solar system and return economic benefits.

While the grant sits with NASA’s Caltech - Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the collaboration means a vital exchange of research between UNSW and NASA, and some exciting developments in the area of off earth mining.


27 November 2014

Dr Williams joined the CSIRO in Australia in 2013, bringing with him a wealth of experience in space agency leadership in the UK and Europe. He spoke about the remarkable transformation taking place in the UK space sector as a result of renewed government and private sector cooperation and investment. He related his European experience to the challenges faced by the Australian space sector and will commented on the opportunities as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA) Annual General Meeting

Preceeding the SIAA Distinguished Lecture was a full day of activity as ACSER played host to an SIAA Executive Meeting, a Strategic Meeting on the Future of Space and the Annual General Meeting, at which Prof Dempster was relected to the SIAA Executive Council.

Annual Space Industry Association of Australia Distinguished Lecture:The UK Space Transformation - Lessons for Australia

BELOW: Opening slide from the lecture on 27th November



ACSER Seminar Series

ACSER’s lunch-time seminar series plays an important role in achieving several of its aims: outreach, engagement within and without the faculty and university, mentoring of staff, and research training for postgraduate students. The series gained momentum in 2014 with audiences of up to 50 people at some events, including not just staff and students from UNSW, but also attracting students from other universities and interested people from industry and the wider community.

Title Speaker/s Date Research Under Reduced Gravity

Conditions Dr Barnaby Osborne (ACSER, UNSW Australia)

Thursday, 1 May 2014

UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering Research Overview and Radar Activities

Prof Karl Woodbridge (University College London)

Friday, 2 May 2014

Delta-V, CubeSats & Rocket Lab - Space 2.0 Hotting Up

Dr Tim Parsons Advisor, Saber Astronautics Member and Sydney Chapter Representative, Space Angels Network Founding Executive, delta-V SpaceHub

Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Arkaroola Mars Robot Challenge

Expedition - UNSW Teams

Off World Robotics BLUEsat Off World Robotics Team Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Off World Robotics Steven Hobbs, UNSW Canberra PhD Candidate

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

UNSW Canberra Space Initiative Professor Russell Boyce Tuesday, 26 August 2014

International Astronautical

Congress 2014

Presentations

Real-Time On-Board Satellite Navigation using GPS and Galileo Measurements

Sanat Biswas (PhD Candidate) Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Tracking Aircraft via CubeSat Constellations

Thien Nguyen (BLUEsat) Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Australian Space

Research Conference

2014 Presentations

Robotic swarms as means to autonomously and rapidly characterise small celestial bodies

William Crowe (PhD Candidate) Friday, 26 September 2014

Trajectory Design for Asteroid Retrieval Missions

Scott Dorrington (PhD Candidate) Friday, 26 September 2014

The Breakup of Liquid Jets in Reduced Gravity Conditions

Joshua Brandt (PhD Candidate) Friday, 26 September 2014

Real-Time Acquisition and Tracking of Galileo E1 Signals in Low Earth Orbit Scenarios

Dr Joon Wayn Cheong (Research Associate)

Friday, 26 September 2014

BLUEsat Robotics to Mars: Lessons on real world testing for student projects

Steph McArthur (BLUEsat Off World Robotics)

Friday, 26 September 2014

LEFT: ACSER Seminar Presentations throughout 2014


YEAR IN REVIEW: Other Highlights

ACSER PhD Student Sanat Biswas select-ed to participate in 2014 IAF Emerging-Space Leaders Grant Programme

May 2014

ACSER PhD Student, Mr Sanat Biswas, was selected by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) to participate in the 2014 IAF Emerging Space Leaders Grant Programme. The grant will cover Mr Bisaws' attendance at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Toronto, Canada, from 29 September - 3 October 2014.

Only fourteen awards were made from more than 109 students and young professionals applying from 40 countries.

65th Annual International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada

29 September - 3 October 2014

ACSER finally esablished itself as a member of the International Astronautical Federation and was able to send a strong contingent to the 2014 IAC.

In total ACSER gave five paper presentations at the conference, and contributed the “Australia 2017” exhibitor stall. The bid was successful and the good news that the 2017 IAC will be held in Adelaide was announced shortly after the conference.

UNSW Open Day

September 2014

This was the first year the ACSER participated with a stall at the UNSW Open Day. Volunteers discussed our many research projects with high school students and their parents, passing around the QB50 3D printed model, while BLUEsat performed a balloon demonstration.

Galileo Certification

June 2014

ACSER researchers (Jinghui Wu, Mazher Choudhury, Kevin Parkinson) were recognised by ESA for making 3 of the world’s first position fixes using Galileo satellites. Two certidficates are now proudly displayed in the ACSERoffices, while the third resides with Kevin in New Zealand.

The European Space Agency wishes to thank

The Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER),

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

for the successful Galileo position fix made

on 3 April 2013 from 10:44 to 11:46 UTCin Sydney, Australia

Lat.: -33°.55 Long.: 151°.13

This award is granted to the first 50 users of the Galileo system.

Didier FaivreDirector of the Galileo Programme and navigation-related activities

The European Space Agency wishes to thank

the University of New South Wales Surveying & Geospatial Engineering

School of Civil & Environmental Engineering Kensington Campus, Sydney, Australia

for the successful Galileo position fix madeon 19th March 2014 from 05:53 to 09:09 UTC in

Delft, The NetherlandsLat.: 51°.98 Long.: 4°.38Alt.: 75.84 m

This award is granted to the first 50 users of the Galileo system.

Didier FaivreDirector of the Galileo Programme and navigation-related activities


UNSW Team win "Best Experiment" in Global Space Balloon Challenge

June 2014

Team "Bare Necessities" won "Best Experiment" in this year's Global Space Balloon Challenge with their experiment titled Payload Motion Trends from Atmospheric Data. The Balloon Challenge, launched by Stanford, MIT and the University of Michigan, is an international education outreach and collaboration project to encourage people from around the world to build and launch their own high-altitude balloon science experiments. The team comprised of Josh Yen, Michael Woods, William Crowe (UNSW PhD Candidates) and Jeffrey Peng (Professional mechanical/noise and vibration engineer at Wilkinson Murray Australia).

The balloon, BALU-1, was a Totex 1500 gram helium-filled super-pressure type, which reached a peak height of approximately 29.5 km above the Hunter Valley in Australia. It had a raft of sensors attached to measure temperature, humidity, magnetic field, acceleration, radiation and irradiance, as well as cameras and GPS. This was all run through an Arduino Mega and data was saved to a micro SD.

BALU-1 attracted some attention from Hunter Valley local news, showing pictures and video from its two Hack HD 1080p cameras on a beautiful, clear day. The pictures showed the varying landscape of the valley, ranging from state forests to farmland, beaches, ocean and expansive open-cut coal mines. Bare Necessities could infer temperature and spin from the balloon’s solar cell data, which was a particularly intriguing and unexpected finding.

Bare Necessities was funded by the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, UNSW’s Aerosoc, and the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.

14th Australian Space Research Confer-ence, University of South Australia, Adelaide

29 Spetember - 1 October 2014

This was the eighth ASRC jointly sponsored and organised by the National Committee for Space and Radio Science (NCSRS) and the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA), with the support of theAustralian Space Research Institute (ASRI) and the Mars Society of Australia AMEC.

In 2014 ACSER team members contributed 11 presentations and 3 posters to the conference, comprising over 10% of the total number of submissions. This is in addition to a very strong turn out from fellow UNSW Engineering and Science representatives.

ION GNSS+ 2015 in Tampa, USA

14 - 18 September 2014

Prof Dempster didn’t spend all his time at this conferenence gambling. He did chair a session - at the world’s top satellite navigation conference. ACSER members were named on 7 papers at this year’s conference.


Media & Publicity

ACSER had a solid year with regards to media, with publicity reaching across all forms of print, radio and web news feeds and providing exposure for Centre staff and projects. A clear sign that ACSER is carving a niche for itself as the go-to resource for expert advice on satellite technology was the number of media enquiries received seeking opinion and interviews on the satellite tracking and disappearance of the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

2014 Media Coverage:

• Off-Earth Mining grant for UNSW researchers and NASA (Mining Education Australia Newsletter, 11th December 2014)

• Off-Earth Mining (UNSW Engineers emagazine, 3rd December 2014)• Ebola threat raises other security concerns (Landmark Magazine, December 2014)• Interview with Dr Barnaby Osborne on BBC (UK) regarding ESA’s Rosetta mission (14th November 2014)• NanoRacks Is Bringing A SMiLE To The ISS (Satnews, 24th October 2014)• International Space University to send SMiLE to Space Station (International Space University Press Release ISU#56,

23rd October 2014)• ION GNSS+ Focuses on System Updates, Indoor Location (GPS World, 17 September 2014)• Live Interview with Dr Barnaby Osborne (ABC Radio QLD, 12 September 2014)• Dr Ediz Cetin, Feature Interview (The IET - Electronics Letters, Volume 50, Issue 19, 11 September 2014)• GPS jammers on notice as detector nears market-readiness (The Australian, 2 September 2014)• $600K to cut satellite interference and building costs (CIO, 2 September 2014)• Space research to make cheaper satellites, improve GPS (UNSW Newsroom, 2 September 2014)• Selling the merits of rocket science: Is Australia ready for Space 2.0? (Business Spectator, 29 August 2014)• New Space Accelerator Seeking to Jumpstart Australian Space Industry (Via Satellite, 27 August 2014)• Investing in space: what the UK Space Agency can teach Australia (The Conversation, 24 July 2014)• 2024, a space odyssey (Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 2014)• Life on Mars: Meet the Australians preparing for the mission of a lifetime (Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 2014)• How will Inmarsat bring in-flight internet to Europe? (The Conversation, 11 June 2014)• The Hunter from space, pics, video (The Newcastle Herald, 6 June 2014)• NSW industry heads into space (NSW Trade & Investment, 6 May 2014)• Circuits for Satellites (Australasian Science Magazine, April 2014)• The search for MH370: Why can’t we find it? (Cosmos Magazine, 15 April 2014)• UNSW postgraduate students enter balloon space race (UNSW Mechanical Engineering News, 7 April 2014)• How many satellites are watching Earth? (ABC Local Radio QLD, 27 March 2014) • Detection of MH370 debris required a ‘human eyeball operation’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 2014)• Flight MH370: Indian Ocean objects might have drifted hundreds of miles (The Guardian, 21 March 2014)• Interview with Prof. Andrew Dempster on using satellites to find the missing MH370 flight (ABC Radio 702, 21 March

2014)• Interview with Prof. Andrew Dempster on Australian Satellite Technology (ABC TV News ACT, 19 March 2014)• Interview with Prof. Andrew Dempster on Australia’s role in Space (ABC TV News NSW and News 24, 14 March 2014)• Dude, where’s my satellite? (TripleJ, 6 March 2014)

Full list with links available from: acser.unsw.edu.au/media.html

OurStudents


ENGG1000 is a broad interdisciplinary course taught to all UNSW first year undergraduate engineers providing an introduction to design. In Semester 1 2014 around 1800 students enrolled this course and attempted a variety of design projects across the 9 Engineering Schools. Under the School of Mining, a new project was introduced in 2014 with the theme of Off Earth Mining.

Students were set the following task:

“In conjunction with your Mentor you are required to design and construct an item of mining machinery to operate on the moon or in space. You can mine the moon or you can mine an asteroid. I will provide you with specifications for an asteroid ‘miner’ but as this course is all about Design and Innovation all design initiatives are welcome to be discussed with your mentor. It is meant to be an innovative but feasible cross disciplinary project hence your team should have not only miners but have representatives from other disciplines to provide specialised input.”

Outcomes of the students projects: scenes show holes being drilled into a white sphere in an attempted analogue of asteroid mining methods.

ENGG1000

Undergraduate Education


The BLUEsat Group is a collection of undergraduate students at UNSW Australia dedicated to creating easy-to-access space technology.

The mission of the group is to take on practical space engineering projects and in doing so, give undergraduate engineering students hands-on experience on space technology. The group is currently undertaking three projects

• Development of a satrospheric balloon vehicle for scientific experiments

• Design of a CubeSat for entry into the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (CSDC)

• Construction of a Mars Rover for entry into the European Rover Challenge (ERC)

Club History

BLUEsat was started in 1997 as the Basic Low-Earth Orbit UNSW Experimental Satellite (BLUEsat) project, aimed at designing, building and launching the first undergraduate satellite in Australia. With the completion and demonstration of our first prototype in early 2013, the Group expanded its operations to include research into emerging CubeSat technologies, off-world rovers and near space experimental platforms.

From 2010 BLUEsat was taken under the wing of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research.

BLUEsat

Satellite Project

2014 was a year of endings and beginnings for the BLUEsat team. With the old satellite format officially retired, the team were free to begin work on the next generation of BLUEsat, which followed the Cubesat Microsatellite format. The team partnered with the University of Toronto’s Aerospace team to enter the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge, the first team from Australia to enter.

BLUEsat Leader Wins Student Service Award

11 December 2014

ACSER congratulates mechanical engineering student Mr Thien Nguyen on winning this much deserved Faculty accolade which comes with a small monetary reward.

Thien completed his undergraduate Engineering and Mathematics degree in 2014, throughout which he completed industry projects with Thales Alenia Space, Genesys Electronics Design and participated in numerous research initiatives under ACSER and the BLUEsat team. His honours thesis investigated Tracking Aircraft through CubeSat Constellation Design.

Thien has been directly involved in BLUEsat’s recent revitalisation and helped spearhead numerous new project initiatives, including the Off World Robotics Team and CubeSat research arm of BLUEsat.

Thien’s He remains an ongoing member of the BLUEsat project and aspires to be a leader in the Australian Space Industry.

The old satellite format now going into

retirement


Stratospheric Balloon Testing

BLUEsat’s stratospheric testing initiative sends high-altitude sounding balloons up to 30,000m with a suite of tracking and telemetry sensors to facilitate the near-space testing of flight hardware, as well as a state-of-the-art separation mechanism to ensure flight control. The flights are also used for high altitude experiments for academic groups within UNSW. Flights are flown out of Muswellbrook, NSW.

The inaugural BLUEsat balloon launch was conducted in late 2014, setting the standard for the many successful launches that would come. The crew gained valuable experience in logistics, payload design and system tracking and recovery as they journeyed across Rankin’s Springs, in rural NSW.

BELOW/RIGHT: Photos of the team and of an ACSER payload sent up in the first BLUEsat flightBOTTOM: Still image taken from video filmed by a camera attached to the BLUEsat payload at an altitude of over 20km.


Off World Robotics

The BLUEsat Off-World Robotics group provides an opportunity for students to develop robotic systems with a particular focus on extra-terrestrial exploration. In the long term the group aims to develop a versatile rover, capable of performing a variety of tasks in an environment similar to what would be experienced on the surface of the moon or Mars.

Off World Robotics (OWR) was formed during the starting weeks of the first student semester of 2014 and after only several months has deigned and built their very first rover “Buttercup”. In early July, this rover and a team of four flew to Arkaroola to take part in the Mars Robot Challenge, giving incite to both the strengths and weakness of the software and hardware implemented. After retuning the team presented their findings and, using this new information, OWR began designing their next rover platform “BLUEtounge” to compete in the 2015 European Rover Challenge.

ABOVE: Mars Society Arkaroola Challenge 2014 LogoRIGHT: BLUEsat OWR team presenting their work at an ACSER seminar


Year/Semester Name School (of Student)

Supervisor/s Topic or Title

S2 2013 – S1 2014 Chris Warren MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne

Design of the Testing Procedures for a Rapid Proto-typed PEEK Satellite Structure

S2 2013 – S1 2014 Thien Nguyen MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne, Ediz Cetin

Mission Design and Specification for a Space Based Aircraft Monitoring System

S2 2013 – S1 2014 Thomas Fisk EET Ediz Cetin, Oliver Diessel

Design of a Fault-Tolerant CubeSat FPGA Payload

S2 2013 – S1 2014 Ivan Chun Pui Cheung

MME Nathan Kinkaid Low cost satellite constellation development using on-orbit manufacturing

S2 2013 – S1 2014 Joe Heun Kim MME Nathan Kinkaid Low thrust optimisation for the retrieval of water from asteroids

S1-S2 2014 Zhaoxu Hu EET Andrew Dempster, Ediz Cetin

Monitoring space junk using radar

S1-S2 2014 Carl Puchner EET Andrew Dempster AMSA DGPS Receiver Design

S1-S2 2014 Kevin Joo-Kwan Lee

EET Andrew Dempster Multi GNSS Receiver optimisation

S1-S2 2014 Michael Klas MME Naomi Tsafnat, A, Prof Mike Manefield (BABS)

Asteroid bio-mining: design and test of bacteria in vacuum conditions

S1-S2 2014 Paul Nguyen MINE Serkan Saydam Applicability of Shock Heating and Freezing on Regolith Found on Asteroids for Exploration Drilling

S1-S2 2014 Jenny Xiaoyi Ding

EET Ediz Cetin Pi-Eye:- Raspberry Pi based Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition for Intelligent Vehicles

S1-S2 2014 Jerry Ralhan EET Ediz Cetin Energy Scavenging and Harvesting for Mobile Devices

S1-S2 2014 Zhaoxu Hu EET Ediz Cetin, Andrew Dempster

Monitoring Space Junk using radar

S1-S2 2014 Joshua Abbey MME Garth Pearce, Ediz Cetin The Feasibility of Small-Scale, Space-Based, Solar Power Satellites in Low Earth Orbits

S1-S2 2014 Natalie Jap MME Garth Pearce, Ediz Cetin 3D Printing of Functional Structures for Space Applications

S1-S2 2014 Taofiq Huq MME Garth Pearce, Ediz Cetin Microwave-Rigidisable Composite Gossamer Space Structures

S1-S2 2014 Karthiga Manoharan

MME Nathan Kinkaid Design of a sample-return mission to Ganymede

S1-S2 2014 Guardino Hadituomo

MME Nathan Kinkaid Ion beam shepherd and solar sail couple for asteroid threat mitigation

S1-S2 2014 Erchao Zhang MME Nathan Kinkaid Design of a mission to divert an incoming asteroid

S1-S2 2014 Timothy Broadbent

MME Nathan Kinkaid Centrifugal artificial gravity modelling and experiments

S1-S2 2014 Tristan A Brown

MME Nathan Kinkaid Optimisation of near-Earth asteroid orbits after a redirecting force is applied

Honours Supervision

ACSER projects have made an exciting and enriching contribution to the range of fourth year thesis topics available to UNSW Engineering students. In particular, the QB50 cubesat satellite project has provided a wide range of topics for students to study with both practical applications and accessible testing materials. It is expected that the thesis topics relating to QB50 will ramp up as we go into final construction and testing phases next year.

Projects currently span the Schools of Mining Engineering, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and Electrcial Engineering and Telecommunications. Listed below are the students and topics supervised by ACSER team members.


Program Year/ Semester

Name School (of Stu-dent)


Taste of Research

Nov 2014 – Feb 2015

Yue Kang EET Oliver Diessel/ Ediz Cetin

Real-time Programming for the RUSH QB50 Payload

Science Without Borders

Nov 2014 – Feb 2015

Jessé Barreto

EET/Brazil

Ediz Cetin/ Oliver Diessel

FPGA Configurations for the RUSH QB50 Payload

Year/Semester Name School (of Student)


S1-S2 2014 James Bultitude

MME Nathan Kinkaid An air-bearing spacecraft simulator for UNSW

S1-S2 2014 Darryl N. Fernandes

MME Nathan Kinkaid Automated vibration analysis of launch packages for on-orbit assembly

S2 2014 - S1 2015 John Heath III MME Nathan Kinkaid In-Situ Structural Testing of a 3D-Printed Satellite

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Lewis Cowper MME Nathan Kinkaid Investigation of the minimal structure of a satellite assembled on-orbit

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Lingxiao Li MME Nathan Kinkaid The application of electric propulsion on asteroid mining

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Fiona Keniry MME Nathan Kinkaid Electromagnetic launch systems for assisting in the launch of payloads into orbit

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Scott Lee MME Nathan Kinkaid Identifying the accessibility of asteroids for asteroid mining

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Vikas Sewani EET Joon Wayn Cheong Developing a Multicore GNSS Receiver on an FPGA

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Yishi Sun EET Andrew Dempster Monitoring space junk using optical telescopes in space

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Xiaotong Huang

EET Andrew Dempster Live video imaging wireless transmission from UAV

S2 2014 - S1 2015 David Reid MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne

QB50 material outgassing testing of PEEK

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Marty Deaker MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne

In-situ testing of the structural characteristics of a novel cubesat structure

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Jaryl Sim MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne

QB50 Satellite Ground Station Upgrade

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Thomas Hile MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne

Thermal analysis and design for QB50

S2 2014 - S1 2015 Shogan Aversa-Druesne

MME Naomi Tsafnat, Barnaby Osborne, Ediz Cetin

Automated Satellite Tracking System for QB50

S2 2014 – S1 2015 Aykan Ermis EET Ediz Cetin, Garth Pearce Space based solar power

Taste of Research

continued....

Our staff have also particpated in offering Taste of Research projects and Science Without Borders projects over the summer to local and international undergraduate students.


Warrawal

Developing a Comprehensive Tertiary Education Program in Satellite Systems Engineering

caption

The Australian Space Research Program was a government initiative that aimed to develop Australia’s niche space capabilities by funding relevant research and education programs. The Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at the University of New South Wales led a consortium comprising Thales, Optus , and ISAE in securing funding of $675,153 to establish Australia’s first comprehensive masters program in satellite systems engineering as announced by Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr on 17th June 2011.

The Project will develop and deliver a comprehensive, sustainable tertiary education program in satellite systems engineering comprising a two-year master’s qualification. The developed program will be optimised for Australia’s strategic and commercial interests and deliver a “systems-wide” understanding of satellite systems and their application, from the space segment, to the ground operations, and the end users. International and local industry internships and student

exchanges will be incorporated into the program to enhance the skills of graduates.

The Warrawal project will also drive the BLUEsat project to completion and establish a follow-on project that will be evolved into a national Satellite Payload Competition.

The Satellite Systems Masters made a cameo on the front page of the UNSW website in late 2014


Postgraduate Coursework

Master of Engineering Science (Satellite Systems Engineering)

SEMESTER 1

4 core courses:

1. AERO9500 Space Systems Architectures and Orbits

2. ZEIT8012 Space Systems Engineering

3. ELEC9762 Space Mission Development

4. ELEC9765 Space Law and Radio Regulations

SEMESTER 3

2 Electives, year-long project

SEMSTER 2

4 core courses:

1. ELEC9764 The Ground Segment and Space Operations

2. AERO9610 The Space Segment

3. ZEIT8013 Space Applications 1

4. GMAT9765 Space Applications 2 (although this will eventually become either a Civil or Electrical course).

SEMESTER 4

2 Electives, year-long project

In 2014, the University replaced the 8539 Master of Engineering Science Extension program with the 8338 Master of Engineering Science program. Therefore the ELECSS8539 stream was revised to fit the new program and the new stream is now called the ELECOS8338 Master of Engineering Science in Satellite Systems Engineering (the ELECOS8338 Satellite Systems Engineering stream). The ELECOS8338 stream now comprises 8 core courses, 4 electives and a project. The recommended structure for full time study is listed below.

The masters also saw a coordinated advertising campaign with the help of the Faculty. This led to applications and subsequently enrolments. The number of enrolments currently is around 9. Efforts are continuing to advertise the program. In 2014 we ran the AERO9500, ELEC9762 and AERO9610 courses.

Program Year/ Semester

Name School Supervisor/s Topic or Title

MEngSc (Electrical Eng.)

S2 2014 - S1 2015

Yingliang Nie

EET Ediz Cetin/ Garth Pearce

Planning for Space-based Solar Power Stations

Other Postgraduate Coursework Thesis Supervision


Over 130 email enquiries from

around the world were received

during 2014 regarding PhD topics listed on

the ACSER PhD website.

The infographic below shows the country of origin

of those enquiries.

Lucas Banchereau (left), exchange student from France and Sanat Biswas (right), ACSER PhD student.


Higher Degree Research

Postgraduate Research Students in Space Engineering Supervised or Co-Supervised by ACSER Staff and Affiliates

Student Program Type

School Commen-cement

Year

ACSER Funded Scholarship/Stipend

Topic Supervisor/s

Xiangrong Wang PhD EET 2011 Array signal processing for interference

mitigation in GNSS applicationsElias Aboutanios, Andrew Dempster

Kai Zhao Masters by Research EET 2012 Andrew Dempster

Vaidhya Mookiah

Masters by Research EET 2012

$25,000 / year for 3 years

Andrew Dempster

Jendi Kepple PhD MME 2012 Robust Optimisation of Launch Vehicle

Structures Garth Pearce

Joshua Brandt PhD MME 2013 Dynamics and Control of a Chaotic

Dripping Regime in Reduced GravityBarnaby Osborne, Naomi Tsafnat

Sanat Biswas PhD EET 2013

$25,000 / year for 3 years

Real-time On-board Satellite Navigation using Multi-GNSS Receiver

Andrew Dempster, Li (Lily) Qiao

Scott O’Brien PhD EET 2013 GNSS Reflectometry Andrew Dempster

Vinh Tran PhD EET 2013 Andrew Dempster

Madeleine Sabordo PhD EET 2014 Moving Target Detection and Tracking

using Radar in Heterogeneous Clutter Elias Aboutanios

Scott Dorrington PhD MME 2014 Trajectory design for asteroid mining

missionsNathan Kinkaid, John Olsen

William Crowe PhD MME 2014 Characterising asteroids using

spacecraft swarms

Nathan Kinkaid, John Page and John Olsen

Student Program Type School Dates / Duration

ACSER Funded Scholarship/Stipend

Topic Supervisor/s

Lucas Banchereau

Masters Practicum (ENSTA ParisTech, France) EET 6 months,

2014$6000 over 12 weeks

Quadrature Bandpass Sampling

Ediz Cetin, Andrew Dempster

Thierry De Roche

Masters Practicum (Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland)

MINE 6 months, 2014

System Engineering of a Martian Ice Miner for InSitu Resource Utilization in Support of a MarsColony

Serkan Saydam

Xiaobo GU PhD Practicum (Beihang University, China) EET

1 year, 2014 - 2015

Inter-Satellite Timing Synchronisation

Andrew Dempster

International Postgraduate Research Students on ExchangeSupervised by ACSER Staff and Affiliates in Space-Engineering Topics


After completing her undergraduate degree here at UNSW, Jendi Kepple saw an exciting opportunity for a PhD in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, and grabbed it. ‘The combination of the perfect research topic, impressive facilities and the academics cemented my decision to apply for my PhD here too. This topic was not available in any other institution in Australia.’ Along the way, she’s been able to make numerous industry contacts and has worked with some of the globe’s leaders and space enthusiasts.

‘The specific research topic I am working on is linked to an industry research centre of which the German Aerospace Centre, The European Space Agency and NASA are collaborators. I have also been involved as the structural lead of the QB50 satellite project with the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research.’

Jendi has picked up numerous awards as a PhD candidate, including the Centennial Scholarship from the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Royal Society of NSW Scientific Scholarship, the Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowship and the DAAD German Academic Exchange Grant. Through her research, she’s also done plenty of travel, including meetings in Germany, discussions with consortium partners in the Netherlands, a prestigious student ambassadorial mission to a number of universities across China, and conferences in the USA, Canada and Latvia.

Jendi was one of three Australian PhD research candidates given the opportunity to complete an exchange program at the DLR (German Aerospace Center). She completed a five month research stay at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center) in Braunschweig, supported by a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Grant. During these months she witnessed the manufacturing of conical structures for buckling tests and contributed to a journal paper on conical structures, by validating DLR’s novel approaches to calculating reduced buckling loads, with stochastic methods. Jendi also attended and presented her work at the 29th Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“It was a very eye opening experience for me to see the attitudes towards research at the DLR. I met some very focused, talented and driven individuals while I was there,” says Ms Kepple of her experience, “I have definitely learned from this experience and am excited to bring my new knowledge and work ethic back to Sydney.”

“From my personal experience, I have found my supervisor in Germany to be very supportive of his PhD students and encouraging of them to collaborate with other institutions in Germany and overseas. In fact, the research team members are friendly and generous in their help with each other, often going to lunch together and occasionally hosting weekend BBQs at the supervisor’s house.”

“Greater access to more specialised equipment was provided from working in an organisation that is strictly dedicated to the advancement of space engineering.”

Jendi’s Ph.D work is part of Project 2.3 - DESICOS (New Robust DESign Guideline for Imperfection Sensitive COmposite Launcher Structures).

After completing her PhD in early 2015, Jendi will be headed to New Zeland to work with Rocket Lab, a firm that designs and fabricates sounding rockets, small satellite launch systems, and propulsion systems.

PhD Student Profile: Ms Jendi Kepple

OurPeople


Our People

Academic Staff

Professor Andrew Dempster is Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He has a BE and MEngSc from UNSW and a PhD

from University of Cambridge in efficient circuits for signal processing arithmetic. In the late 80s he was system engineer and project manager for the first GPS receiver developed in Australia and has been involved in satellite navigation ever since.

His current research interests are in satellite navigation receiver design and signal processing, areas where he has seven patents, and new location technologies. He is leading the development of space engineering research at ACSER.

Dr Barnaby Osborne is currently an Academic Fellow at UNSW in spacecraft engineering with research interests in CubeSats, hybrid and solid propulsion, space composites, microgravity physics and microgravity facility design. Prior to his appointment

at UNSW he was the field leader for the Astronautics and Space Systems group at Kingston University in the UK. Additionally he has worked as a testing and instrumentation engineer, research and design engineer and space engineering consultant.

Dr Elias Aboutanios is a Senior Lecturer with the The School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He received his BE in Electrical Engineering from UNSW in 1997 and his PhD from UTS in 2002. His PhD research was on the estimation of frequency for the

frequency tracking for communications with a low earth orbit satellite. From 2003 to 2007 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Digital Communications at the University of Edinburgh, where he conducted research on space-time adaptive processing for radar target detection. Since 2007 he has been a senior lecturer at UNSW. His research interests include:

• Signal and Image Processing• Radar and sonar signal processing• Statistical and multidimensional signal processing• Parameter Estimation• Signal Detection

Dr Aboutanios is currently conducting research in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, global navigation satellite systems, radar target detection, biologically inspired signal processing, and theoretical signal processing. He is also active in the research of teaching methodologies and course design. In particular, Dr Aboutanios has developed a new course on electrical engineering design. He currently has a large grant to develop a new masters program in satellite systems engineering. He also has an active interest in satellite technology and in particular cubesats. He has secured money for and initiated UNSW’s involvement in the European QB50 project, which aims to launch 50 cubesats into low earth orbit in 2015.

Core Research Team

Dr Ediz Cetin is a Senior Research Associate at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER), University of New South Wales, Australia. He received his B.Eng. (Hons) degree in Control and Computer Engineering and Ph.D. degree in Unsupervised

Adaptive Signal Processing for Wireless Receivers from the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. His research interests encompass interference detection and localization, fault-tolerant reconfigurable circuits for space applications, adaptive techniques for RF impairment mitigation for communications and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers and design and low-power implementation of digital circuits.


Dr Eamonn Glennon’s first employment in the Australian Space Industry occurred 18 months after he graduated from UNSW with a B.Sc in Computer Science and BE (Hons I) in Electrical Engineering when he started work at Canberra based Auspace Ltd. There he

worked on what was Australia’s very first GPS receiver and has not looked back since. This work continued when the GPS technology was sold to Melbourne based Sigtec Pty Ltd and SigNav Pty Ltd was founded. At SigNav he was responsible for much of the firmware that forms the core of a GPS receiver, including development of GPS related algorithms and customisation of that firmware for applications ranging from tracking taxis using GPS combined with dead-reckoning through to putting GPS receivers into phone handsets and high precision GPS timing. During his time at SigNav, he also completed part time a MEngSc and a PhD in GPS signal processing. Following completion of his PhD he commenced work at UNSW where he continues to work on the UNSW FPGA based GPS receiver, with the aim of customising it for operation in cubesats and other space related applications.

Dr Joon Wayn Cheong is currently a Research Associate at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales (UNSW) where he is currently developing the firmware for the space-qualified Namuru family of GPS/GALILEO integrated

receivers under the Garada and QB50 project. He received his PhD from UNSW where he cracked the Locata pseudolite positioning system’s code and derived hybrid conventional/Collective Detection algorithm. His other research interests in the GNSS field include weak signal acquisition, A-GPS, GNSS/pseudolite integrated signal processing, GNSS interference and spoofing. He authored more than 15 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr Li (Lily) Qiao is a Research Associate in Australian Center of Space Engineering Research (ACSER), the School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications (EET) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She obtained her Bachelor’s degree

in Electrical Engineering and Automation at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) in 2004, joined UNSW as a visiting PhD student from 2009 to 2010, and obtained her PhD in Guidance, Navigation and Control at NUAA in 2011. Her research interests are astronautics, spacecraft attitude determination and control, spacecraft orbit modelling and determination, and space mission design.

Support Staff

Cheryl Brown is the administrator for the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, looking after all aspects of Centre operations such as marketing and events, finance and HR. She also has a hand in overseeing the BLUEsat student space-projects

society, of which she was a founding member in her undergraduate days at UNSW in the 90s.

After leaving a BSc in Physics and Astronomy to pursue Arts majors in Philosophy and The History and Philosohpy of Science, she worked a variety of roles in the not-for-profit sector before commencing with UNSW Engineering in student services in 2007. In 2011 she left that role to travel across Europe, Russia & Mongolia. She returned to Sydney after a year to concentrate on completing a Masters in Ancient World Studies at Sydney University while working part time with UNSW Built Environment, performing assorted admin roles and assisting the Associate Dean (Education).

Cheryl joined the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research at the start of 2014 as their sole administrator. She continues to pursue her love of history and travel, participating her first archaeological dig on the Greek island of Andros in October 2014.


Affiliated Research Staff

Professor Chris Rizos is Professor of Geodesy and Navigation, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Chris is president of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), a member of

the Executive and Governing Board of the International GNSS Service (IGS), and co-chair of the Multi-GNSS Asia Steering Committee. Chris is a Fellow of the IAG, a Fellow and current president of the Australian Institute of Navigation, a Fellow of the U.S. Institute of Navigation, and an honorary professor of Wuhan University, China. Chris has been researching the technology and applications of GPS and other navigation/positioning systems since 1985, and is an author/co-author of over 600 journal and conference papers.

Dr Craig Roberts is a Senior Lecturer majoring in Surveying/ GPS/ Geodesy in the Surveying and Geospatial Engineering group at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He graduated from the South Australian

Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Surveying in 1988. He began his career as a private surveyor in Adelaide and has since worked as a Geodetic Engineer at UNAVCO, USA involved with GPS for geodynamic studies in Nepal, Ethiopia, Argentina and Indonesia. He worked as a scientific assistant at the GeoForschungsZentrum, Germany where his main focus was orbit determination and prediction for a number of geodetic research satellites. He completed his PhD thesis on volcano monitoring using low-cost GPS networks in March 2002. He has lectured at RMIT University in Melbourne for two years. His current research interests involve implications of datum modernisation and leveraging CORS infrastructure for practical application to surveying and geospatial information.

Dr Mazher Choudhury is currently working at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering as a Research Associate. He obtained his PhD from UNSW where he investigated and analysed the potentiality of Locata Positioning Systems into

deformation monitoring system. Currently he is involved in investigating real-time precise point positioning using multi GNSS observations. Previously he was involved in testing the space qualified FPGA-based multi GNSS Integrated receiver for the GARADA Formation Flying. His research interests include land as well as space based GNSS positioning and navigation, multi-GNSS integration algorithms for navigation, GNSS data analysis procedure and improvement of testing procedure for receivers, Locata integration with GNSS.

Dr Garth Pearce is a researcher in Aerospace Engineering, specialising in aerospace structures & composite materials. Garth’s interest in space research began with a concept for a composite, inflatable and rigidisable boom structure for volume limited payloads. He has

co-supervised a number of honours and masters research projects with ACSER investigating the rigidisable boom concept as well as more exotic topics; functional additive manufacture in space and space-based solar power.

Dr Nathan Kinkaid earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He subsequently worked for 3 years in the Structural Dynamics Department of the Aerospace Corporation where he performed research and oversight tasks

in support of national security space programs. Nathan joined the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW in 2007, and his current research interests include off-earth mining, on-orbit assembly of spacecraft, operation of swarms of spacecraft and bicycle


dynamics. He is currently supervising 2 PhD students who collaborate with ACSER on off-earth mining topics and is involved in the design of in-situ structural tests for UNSW's QB50 satellite.

Dr Naomi Tsafnat is a Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering where she teaches orbital mechanics and spacecraft engineering. Her current research projects include the design of asteroid capture and bio-mining missions, and the study of bio-mimetic approaches to aerospace engineering. Dr

Tsafnat has worked in the US at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in satellite thermal design and analysis, and was involved in various projects with NASA Ames Research Center. Dr Tsafnat supervises a PhD student and several undergraduate honours thesis students in space engineering projects, including QB50 and SMiLE.

Dr John Olsen is a Lecturer with the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. His research interests include:• Turbulence.• Simulation philosophy.• Swarms.• Co and Trigeneration systems.• Hybrid vehicles.• Combined heat & power systems.

• Thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics.• Entropy generation minimisation and exergy analysis.• The simulation of gas turbine engines, power stations,

reciprocating piston engines, refrigeration systems, living systems, entropy, etc.

Mr John Page moved to a Senior Lecturer post at the University of New South Wales in 1987 where he has; been responsible for design and simulation, was the founding Chairman for the Aviation program, was a founding member for the Co-operative Research Center

for Aerospace Structures and headed the Aerospace

Engineering Department from 1990-2000. His teaching areas have included Aerospace Design, Flight Dynamics and Simulation, while his research has covered Simulation, Flight Track Development (Qantas PhD.) and Swarms. Previously he was a Senior Lecturer in aerospace engineering at Kingston Polytechnic with research interests focused on Aerospace Policy Studies with the NASA Commercial Office, and Military/Civil Conversions.

Associate Professor Serkan Saydam received his BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Mining Engineering from the Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey and completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Serkan joined the

School of Mining Engineering as a Senior Lecturer in 2006 and was recently promoted to Associate Professor. He currently holds two ARC Linkage Projects and one ACARP research grants worth of over $4 million on Ground Control area. In addition, he has recently sucessfully established a research collaboration with NASA’s JPL. His fields of research include mine planning & design, new mining methods and ground control.

Dr Oliver Diessel gained a B.Math. and BE in Computer Engineering with Honors in 1990 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1998 from the University of Newcastle, NSW. From 1986–1990 he was a Trainee Engineer and from 1991–1992 he was a Systems Engineer with Tomago-

based Allco Steel Constructions. He joined UNSW as a lecturer following postdoctoral research from 1998–2000 at the University of South Australia. Since then, he has been a Senior Researcher at National ICT Australia (NICTA), an Assistant Professor at UNSW Asia in Singapore, and become a Senior Lecturer, primarily involved in teaching digital systems and conducting research into the design, application and support of dynamically reconfigurable hardware. Oliver has had visiting appointments at CalTech and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology in 2003 and Harbin Institute of Technology since 2014.


2014 Visiting Fellows

Dr Kegen Yu is currently a professor in the School of Geodesy and Geomatics and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Geospatial Technology at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. One of his research areas is GNSS reflectometry, making use of GNSS signals for ocean and

land applications (e.g. ocean surface altimetry, Tsunami wave detection and parameter estimation, and snow depth estimation). Another research area is ground-based and satellite-based wireless positioning.

Dr Nagaraj C Shivaramaiah is currently a researcher with the Colorado Centre for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is also a visiting fellow at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, UNSW Sydney where he was involved

in the ASRP funded Garada project during 2011-2014. He is also a research consultant at his own consulting firm GNSS LABS and an advisor to Sensus Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore an indoor navigation start-up. His current research interests include multi-GNSS receiver design and development, systems engineering and signal processing for wireless communication and navigation technologies at large. He is a senior member of the IEEE and the Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society.

Dr Kiho Kwon has been involved with the KOMPSAT telemetry and subsystems design since KOMPSAT-1 in 1999 through to KOMSAT-3 in 2012. His recent work has involved Multi Frequency GPS/Galileo Spaceborne receivers and GPS L1 & Galileo E1 Spaceborne

receiver Engineering Model development. He has a career total 100+ peer-reviewed journal and conference papers in the area of Satellite On-Board Computers and GPS.

Ryan J. R. Thompson is a PhD graduand at the School of EET, UNSW, Australia. He received his BEng in Electrical Engineering from the same university in 2008. His current research activities are focused on the localization of Radio-Frequency Interference (RFI) that impacts ground-based GNSS augmentation systems.

He is now working out of the ACSER officers for ACSER’s industry partner GPSat on a number of collaborations.

Dr Feng Shen is an associate professor with the College of Automation, Harbin Engineering University, China. He received his PhD in 2009 from Harbin Engineering University. He developed the signal acquisition and tracking of the Spread spectrum receiver for the GPS

ground-based augmentation systems. His research interests include BOC signal tracking, and GNSS/INS integrated navigation system. From May 2014 to May 2015, he is a visiting academic with the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). During his visiting, he worked on the Cooperative Positioning in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) which was based on fusing the measurements of Global Positioning System (GPS), Ultra-Wide Bandwidth (UWB) and Inertial Navigation System (INS).

Gu Xioabo, practicum student

from Beihang University (left)

with Dr Shen Feng,

Visiting Acadmic from Harbin

University (right)


2014 Team Photo

2014

ACS

ER Te

am


2014 Industry Partners and Collaborators

NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY O F AU S T R A L I A LT D

Canberra|

Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW

Governance


ACSER Governance

Management Committee

Responsible for ensuring the objectives of the Centre are pursued and implemented.

This Committee is comprised of internal UNSW executive as listed below.

Professor Andrew Dempster is Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He is also Director of Research in the School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems and Director of Postgraduate Research in the Faculty of Engineering. He has a BE and MEngSc from UNSW and a PhD from University of Cambridge in efficient circuits for signal processing arithmetic.

Andrew was system engineer and project manager for the first GPS receiver developed in Australia in the late 80s and has been involved in satellite navigation ever since. He is leading the development of space engineering research at ACSER.

Professor Graham Davies is the Dean of Engineering at the University of New South Wales. Until April 2008 he was the Sir James Timmins Chance Professor of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and executive head of the School of Engineering. He trained as a chemical physicist at the University of Wales, where he completed his doctoral studies.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, The Institution of Engineers

Australia (FIEAust), the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Institute of Physics and IoM3. In 2008 and in 2009 he was named as one of the top 100 most influential scientists and engineers in Australia.

Professor Merlin Crossley is the Dean of Science at the University of New South Wales. He completed his BSc degree at the University of Melbourne, majoring in genetics and microbiology. He moved to Oxford University supported by a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue his doctorate, and then did post-doctoral research at Oxford and at Harvard Medical School. He returned to Australia in 1995 and held various positions at the University of Sydney, including Professor of Molecular Genetics 2005-9, Acting

Dean of Science 2004, Director of Research for the College of Sciences and Technology 2005, and was Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research 2006-8. At the end of 2009 he moved to UNSW to take up the position of Dean of Science.

Professor Michael Frater is the Rector of the University College of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Previous leadership roles include Head of the School of Engineering & Information Technology (2009-2010), Head of the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (2007-9), and Presiding Member of the University College Academic Board (2006-7).

Michael Frater holds bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and science from the

University of Sydney, a Masters in Higher Education from the University of New South Wales and a Doctor of Philosophy in systems engineering from the Australian National University.

Professor Eliathamby Ambikairajah is Head of School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. Professor Ambikairajah’s research interests include speech enhancement, speaker recognition, language recognition, emotion detection and biomedical signal processing. He has authored and co-authored more than 250 conference and journal papers, and is also a regular reviewer for several IEEE, IET and other journals and

conferences. He was the Technical Program Co-Chair for the inaugural APSIPA Summit and Conference in 2010. For his contributions to speaker recognition research, he was invited as a Visiting Scientist to the Institute of Infocomms Research (A*STAR), Singapore in 2009, where he is currently a Faculty Associate.

He received his BSc(Eng) degree from the University of Sri Lanka and received his PhD degree in Signal Processing from Keele University, UK. He was appointed as Head of Electronic Engineering and later Dean of Engineering at the Athlone Institute of Technology in the Republic of Ireland from 1982 to 1999. His key publications led to his repeated appointment as a short-term Invited Research Fellow with the British Telecom Laboratories, U.K., for ten years from 1989 to 1999.

Professor Ambikairajah received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004 for his innovative use of educational technology, the School Awards for Teaching Excellence in 2003, and Academic Management in 2001. He is a currently an APSIPA Distinguished Lecturer for the 2013-14 term. He is a Fellow and a Chartered Engineer of the IET UK and Engineers Australia and is a Member of the IEEE and APSIPA.

In accordance with the outcomes of the 2014 Centre Review by the Centres Secretariat, it was resolved that after 2014 the ACSER Management Committee would be replaced with a Steering Committee to bring Centre governance in line with UNSW Guidelines.

Three Management Committee Meetings were held in 2014. Following are the dates and attendees, with the December meeting representing the final assembly of this Committee.

14th May 2014Prof Nasser Khalili (for Prof Graham Davies) Prof Russell Boyce (for Prof Michael Frater) Prof Eliathamby Ambikairajah Prof Andrew Dempster

27th August 2014Prof Merlin Crossley (Chair) Prof Graham Davies Prof Michael Frater Prof Andrew Dempster Prof Eliathamby Ambikairajah

10th December 2014Prof Merlin Crossley (Chair) Prof Graham Davies Prof Andrew Dempster


Donna Lawler is a commercial satellite lawyer for Optus and a member of the International Institute of Space Lawyers. She has provided legal advice on all aspects of the Optus Satellite business since joining Optus in 1999, and has had key involvement in the build and launch programmes for six satellites, including the negotiation of satellite purchase and launch contracts on behalf of Optus and its parent company SingTel. During more than a decade in the satellite industry, Donna has secured the use of orbital slots,

advised on risk, liability and insurance issues for space-related projects and negotiated satellite capacity contracts with Australian broadcasters, international satellite operators and government entities, including the NBN. She has published papers on Space Law topics and is a regular guest lecturer in Space Law at several universities locally and overseas.

Mark Gauci is Director, Business Development at the Faculty of Engineering, UNSW, responsible for implementing the faculty Community Engagement Strategy, with the specific goal of improving links with business. Prior to joining UNSW Mark was founding CEO of BTF-bioMérieux, an Australian biologicals manufacturing company that is part of the global microbiology diagnostics group bioMérieux S.A. group (based in Lyon, France). Mark led its development from Macquarie University spin-out,

through to operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of bioMérieux. Prior to forming BTF Mark worked as researcher at Macquarie University in the application of lasers in biological sciences.

Advisory Committee

Responsible for providing feedback on the strategy and direction of the Centre.

This Committee is comprised of the following internal UNSW executive and external industry members:

Before Dr Laurent Rivory was appointed as UNSW Research Strategy Office Director, he was Senior Director of R&D at Johnson & Johnson Research, leading projects in the fields of virology, cancer, diagnostics, RNA therapeutics and ophthalmology. Previously Laurent served on the Johnson & Johnson DC Ophthalmology Task Force and prior to that was Head of the Cancer Pharmacology Laboratory of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney Cancer Centre. He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company

Directors (AICD) and carried out his post-doc studies as an INSERM-NHMRC Fellow in Bordeaux.

Professor Chris Rizos is currently Head of the School of Surveying & Spatial Information Systems at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Chris has been researching the technology and applications of GPS since 1985, and established over a decade ago the Satellite Navigation and Positioning group at UNSW, today the largest academic GPS/GNSS and wireless location technology research laboratory in Australia. Chris is the President of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), and a

member of the Executive and Governing Board of the International GNSS Service (IGS). Chris is currently Chair of the working group developing the strategic plan for GNSS for Australia.

Dr Nick Stacy was born in Adelaide Australia.He received a B.E. from the University of Adelaide in 1984, a M.S. from Stanford University in 1985 and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1993, all in Electrical Engineering.He worked at Arecibo Observatory from 1985 to 1986 and at British Aerospace Australia from 1987 to 1989.His work has included the acquisition and analysis of Arecibo Observatory radar observations of the Moon and the analysis of Arecibo and Magellan radar data of Venus. He joined the Australian

Defence Science and Technology Organisation in 1993 where he is a radar specialist working in the field of imaging radar signal processing and backscatter analysis primarily using the Ingara airborne radar system.

Dr David Williams is a member of the CSIRO Executive Team and is CSIRO’s Group Executive – Information Sciences – a role that sees him lead CSIRO’s research in: astronomy, digital productivity and services, mathematics, statistics and information and communication technologies. Prior to his CSIRO role, Dr Williams was the Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Space Agency which funds UK involvement in civil space programs from the science of the universe to broadcast satellite developments.

Mr Michael Davis was appointed the Chair of the SIAA in 2013 bringing with him a wealth of experience as a legal practitioner in the Australian space industry and other sectors. A graduate of the Master of Space Studies program at the International Space University, he has been involved in a wide range of space related pursuits including chairing the Advisory Board of the UniSA institute of Telecommunications Research, attending UN and ITU space meetings, representing Australian and overseas

clients involved in commercial launch, satellite and other space-related projects, co-authoring policy submissions on behalf of the association and organising the 2004 ISU Space Studies Program and the 2011-2013 Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Programs in Adelaide.

Mr Kirby Ikin is a global leader in commercial space development with advanced negotiation, risk management, and analytical skills. At Asia Pacific Aerospace Consultants, he advises the aerospace industry and national governments on finance, insurance, market analysis, project management and launch services. This includes a feasibility study for an Australian spaceport, satellite valuation, and analysis of the regional applications for a new satellite-based service. Kirby earlier created a new aerospace division

within a major insurer (GIO Space), managed the commercial operations of a project to create a breakthrough service to extend the profitable working lives of communications satellites (Orbital Recovery Ltd in the UK), and is Chairman of the Board of the National Space Society, one of the world’s leading space advocacy organizations.

Two Advisory Committee Meetings were held in 2014. Following are the dates and attendees.

16th April 2014Kirby Ikin (chair)Donna LawlerMichael DavisLaurent Rivory David Williams Chris RizosAndrew Dempster

26th August 2014Andrew DempsterChris RizosDonna LawlerKirby Ikin (chair)Laurent Rivory Michael DavisNick Stacy


Centre Grant Funding

The following grants cover funding received by ACSER during 2014. In addition to below, there were a number of carried over funds from grants relating to existing projects.

Grant Project Period

Research Topic Partners GrantingOrganisation

Awarded Amount

ACSER’s Portion

Compatibility & Technology Dempnstrator

2015 to 2017

The development of new techniques to process multi frequency time difference of arrival and spoofer data sets to support the geolocation of GPS RF interference for defence operations.

GPsat Systems Australia, Defence Science and Technology Organisation

Defence Science and Technology Organisation

$300,000 $300,000

ARC Discovery Project

2015 to 2017

Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for SpaceInvestigators:SParameswaran (CSE), ADempster (ACSER), ODiessel (CSE), ECetin (ACSER)

School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)

Australian Research Council

$340,300

Funds to reside with

School of Computer

Science and Engineering

ARC Linkage Project

2015 to 2017

Rapid Recovery from Radiation-induced Errors in Reconfigurable Hardware

General Dynamics New Zealand


$321,899 $321,899

ARC Linkage Project

2015 to2019

Protecting Critical Transport Infrastructure using Hybrid Approaches for Interference and Spoofer Detection and Localisation

GPSat Systems, University of Adelaide


$505,087 $365,654

Collaborative Intelligent Transport Systems

2014Nav/Com/Ins coupling techniquesDemonstrator

Thales Alenia Space (France)

Thales Alenia Space (France)

€40,000 ($58,080)

€40,000 ($58,080)

Biarri BAE Systems

New income for 2014: $44,538

QB50 2013 - 2015

An International Network of 50 CubeSats UNSW UNSW $75,000 $75,000

QB50 2013 - 2015

An International Network of 50 CubeSats UNSW UNSW Faculty

of Engineering $45,000 $45,000

Faculty Research Grant

Jan 2014 toDec 2014

Investigation of fluid management and transfer in a rotating system in reduced gravityInvestigator: Dr Barnaby Osborne

UNSW UNSW Faculty of Engineering $20,000 $20,000

Faculty Research Grant

Jan 2014 toDec 2014

Cooperative Positioning via Multi-sensor Integration for Collaborative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS)Investigator: Dr Joon Wayn Cheong

UNSW UNSW Faculty of Engineering $20,000 $20,000

ACSER Centre Support Funds

2011 - 2014 UNSW UNSW $600,000 $600,000


Financial Report

Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research

Statement of Financial Performance 2014 2013 Difference

For the Year Ended December 2014 Note $'000 $'000 $'000 %

Research Revenue: 1 203 447 (244) -55%Donations & Bequest - Draw downs - - - - UNSW Contributions 421 616 (195) -32%Faculty Contributions 2 36 56 (21) -37%Other Restricted Revenue 3 - - - - Commercial Activity - Fees for Service - 13 (13) -100%Sundry Other Revenue 4 (4) -100%

Total Revenue 659 1,137 (477) -42%

Salaries, Oncosts and other staff costs 448 1,102 (654) -59%Scholarship Stipends 58 43 14 33%Contract & Consulting Services 42 8 34 399%Repairs and Maintenance 0 0 (0) -47%Consumables 54 69 (15) -22%Travel 38 152 (114) -75%Equipment Non Capitalised 0 31 (30) -99%Entertainment 6 4 3 70%Marketing 1 2 (1) -40%Miscellaneous Expenses (27) 195 (222) -114%

Total Non-People Costs 172 504 (331) -66%Total Expenses 620 1,606 (986) -61%

TOTAL CONTRIBUTION - SURPLUS/(DEFICIT) 39 (469) 508 -108%

Depreciation 15 4 10 234%

SURPLUS / (DEFICIT) after Depreciation 24 (474) 498 -105%

Cashflow Funded Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) 112 30 82 274%

NOTES:1 Revenue in Advance will be noted in Creditors & Other Liabilities.

Research Revenue generated (cash basis). 103 467 (364) Category 1 Research Revenue therein - - -

2 UNSW Budget model includes other revenue itemsTeaching Revenue - - -Block Grants - 146 (146) -100%Indirect Cost Recoveries 17 193 (176) -91%

3 Other Research Revenue includes internal fund transfers.

4 Restricted Funds - Cash at year end 359 543 (184)

5 Funds available in Division of Advancement 42 42

REVENUE

EXPENSE

Report provided by Cheryl Brown. Approved with amendments by Faculty Management Accountant Patricia Xu on 1 June 2015

Publications


Publications

Journal ArticlesAboutanios, E.; Shanglin Ye, "Efficient Iterative Estimation of the Parameters of a Damped Complex Exponential in Noise," Signal Processing Letters, IEEE , vol.21, no.8, pp.975,979, Aug. 2014

Bours, A., Cetin, E., Dempster, A.G., “Enhanced GPS interference detection and localisation”, Electronics Letters, vol 50, no 19, 11 Sep 2014

Cetin, E., Thompson, R.J.R. and Dempster, A.G., “Passive interference localization within the GNSS environmental monitoring system (GEMS): TDOA aspects”, GPS Solutions, October 2014, vol 18, no 4, pp 483-495

Cheng, H., Page, J., Olsen, J. & Kinkaid, N., "Decentralised Spacecraft Manoeuvre Planning", Journal Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol 86, Iss 5, 2014.

Cheng, J., Yang, L., Li, Y., & Zhang, W., 2014. Seamless Outdoor/Indoor Navigation With Wifi/GPS Aided Low Cost Inertial Navigation System. Physical Communication, Si: Indoor Navigation & Tracking,13, 31–43.

Cheong, J.W., Wu, J. and Dempster, A.G., 2014. Dichotomous Search Of Coarse Time Error In Collective Detection For GPS Signal Acquisition. GPS Solutions, (DOI: 10.1007/S10291-014-0365-9), February 2014.

Choy, S., Harima, K., Rizos, C., & Kogure, S., "The Future Of GNSS Navigation? The QZSS L-Band Experimental Signal", The Journal Of The Chartered Institution Of Civil Engineering Surveyors, December – January Issue, 31-33.

Dempster, A. G., Li, Y., Rizos, C., Yang, Y. and Yue, X., “Inter-satellite ranging augmented gps relative navigation for satellite formation flying,” The Journal of Navigation, vol. 67, pp. 437–449, 5 2014.

Gallagher, T., Wise, E., Yam, H.C., Li, B., Ramsey-Stewart, E., Dempster, A.G. & Rizos, C., “Indoor navigation for people who are blind or vision impaired: where are we and where are we going?”, Journal of Location Based Services, vol 8 no 1, 2014, pp54-73, DOI: 10.1080/17489725.2014.895062

Grant, D., Donnelly, N., Crook, C., Amos, M., Ritchie, J. and Roberts, C. (2014) Special feature – managing the dynamics of the New Zealand spatial cadastre, Journal of Spatial Science, (in print)

Li L., Cheong, J.W., Wu, J. & Dempster, A.G., “Improvement to Multi-resolution Collective Detection in GNSS Receivers”, The Journal of Navigation, The Royal Institute of Navigation, vol 67, (doi:10.1017/S0373463313000635), 2014, pp277-293

Moghtadaiee, V. and Dempster, A.G., “Design protocol and performance analysis of indoor fingerprinting positioning systems”, Physical Communication, vol 13 part A, Dec 2014, pp 17–30 (doi: 10.1016/j.phycom.2014.02.004), online 26 February 2014

Moghtadaiee, V. and Dempster, A.G., “Determining the best vector distance measure for use in location fingerprinting”, Pervasive and Mobile Computing, available online 11 November 2014, doi:10.1016/j.pmcj.2014.11.002

Moghtadaiee, V. and Dempster, A.G., “Indoor Location Fingerprinting Using FM Radio Signals”, IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, vol.60, no.2, pp.336-346, June 2014, doi: 10.1109/TBC.2014.2322771

Page J.R., Zheng Y.Y., Ahmed N.A., Heat dissipation of a horizontal take-off launcher in glide and skip re-entry, Journal Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol 10, Issue 1, 2014, pp33-45.

Shen, F., Cheong, J.W. & Dempster, A.G., "An UWB-based range/GPS tight integration approach for relative positioning in VANETs", Measurement Science and Technology, Vol 26 No. 4, DOI:10.1088/0957-0233/26/4/045003

Shen, F., Xu, G. and Qiao, L., “Non-Coherent Unambiguous Tracking Method for Cosine-BOC Signals Based on S-Curve Shaping Technique”. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, available online 10 November 2014, DOI: 10.1109/LSP.2014.2368951

Wang, K., Zhang, N., & Li, Y., 2014. A New Algorithm For Fine Acquisition Of GPS Carrier Frequency. GPS Solutions, 18(4), 593-603.

Wang, X., Aboutanios, E. and Amin, M.G., "Thinned Array Beampattern Synthesis by Iterative Soft-Thresholding-Based Optimization Algorithms," Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on , vol.62, no.12, pp.6102,6113, Dec. 2014

Wang, X., Aboutanios, E., Trinkle, M.; Amin, M.G., "Reconfigurable Adaptive Array Beamforming by Antenna Selection," Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on , vol.62, no.9, pp.2385,2396, May1, 2014

Wang, X., Ahmed, F., Aboutanio,s E. and Amin M., "Interference DOA Estimation for GNSS Receivers using Fully Augmentable Array", Journal of the Franklin Institute, 6 Nov 2014, ISSN 0016-0032.

Whitty, M., Goward, J., Roberts, C. & Rizos, C. (2014) Estimating and Predicting Carbon Sequestration in a Vineyard using Precision Viticulture Techniques: A Case Study, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, (submitted 23 Sept) (ERA2010 ranking: B)

Yang, L., Li, Y., Wu, Y. and Rizos, C., 2014. An Enhanced Mems-Ins/GNSS Integrated System With Fault Detection & Exclusion (Fde) Capability For Land Vehicle Navigation In Urban Areas. GPS Solutions, 18(4), 593-603, DOI 10.1007/S10291-013-0357-1.

Yang, Y., Li, Y., Rizos, C., Dempster, A.G. and Yue, X., “Inter-satellite Ranging Augmented GPS Relative Navigation for Satellite Formation Flying”, The Journal Of Navigation, vol 67, pp 437–449, 2014. doi:10.1017/S0373463313000763

Yang, Y., Yue, X., Li, Y., Rizos, C. & Dempster, A.G., “GPS Receiver Clock Modelling for Kinematic-Based Precise Orbit Determination of Low Earth Orbiters”, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering vol 305, 23 Apr 2014, pp 133-142

Yang, Y., Yue, X., Yuan, J. and Rizos, C., "Enhancing The Kinematic Precise Orbit Determination Of Low Earth Orbiters Using GPS Receiver Clock Modelling", Journal Of Advances In Space Research, 54, 1901-1912, DOI: 10.1016/J.Asr.2014.07.016.

Yu, K., Rizos, C. and Dempster, A.G., “GNSS-Based Model-Free Sea Surface Height Estimation in Unknown Sea State Scenarios”, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2014

Yu, K., Rizos, C., Burrage, D., Dempster, A.G., Zhang, K. & Markgraf, M., “GNSS remote sensing”, Editorial, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing vol 158, 25 October 2014, doi:10.1186/1687-6180-2014-158

Yu, K., Rizos, C., Burrage, D., Dempster, A.G., Zhang, K. & Markgraf, M., “GNSS remote sensing”, Editorial, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing vol 158, 25 October 2014, doi:10.1186/1687-6180-2014-158


Refereed Conference PapersCetin, E., Diessel, O., Gong, L. and Lai, V., “Reconfiguration Network Design for SEU Recovery in FPGAs,” IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), pp.1524 – 1527, June 2014.

Craig, G.A., Saydam, S. and Dempster, A.G., “Mining off-Earth minerals: a long-term play?”, Proc 25th Society of Mining Professors Annual Meeting, The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 27-29 June 2014, Gauteng, South Africa, pp167-182

Crowe W.J., Kinkaid N.M., Page J.R. and Olsen J., Simulation of spacecraft about collinear Lagrange points of small bodies in the Solar System. SimTect 2014, Adelaide, Australia, 25 Aug 2014 - 28 Aug 2014. Proceedings editors: Fisher A. SimTect 2014 Conference Proceedings. Simulation Australia. 313-318. 28 Aug 2014

Sabordo, M.G. and Aboutanios, E., "Enhanced target tracking by incorporating target visibility into the IMM algorithms," Digital Signal Processing (DSP), 2014 19th International Conference on , vol., no., pp.682,687, 20-23 Aug. 2014

Wang, X., Aboutanios, E. and Amin, M., Off-Grid High Resolution DOA Estimation for GNSS Circular Array Receivers, Proceedings of the 27th ION GNSS+, 27th ION GNSS+, Florida, USA, Sept 2014

Wang, X., Amin, M., Ahmed, F. and Aboutanios, E., Coarray Based Optimum Geometries for DOA Estimation with Multiple CRPA GPS Array, Proceedings of the 27th ION GNSS+, 27th ION GNSS+, Floriad, USA, Sept 2014.

Wang, X., Amin, M., Ahmed, F. and Aboutanios, E., Minimum Output Power Anti-Jam with Fully Augmentable Arrays in GNSS, Proceedings of the IEEE BenMAS, 2014 Benjamin Franklin Symposium on Microwave and Antenna Sub-systems (BenMAS 2014), Philadelphia, PA, 27 Sept 2014

Yang, Y., Yue, X., Li, Y., Rizos, C. and Dempster, A.G., 2014. GPS Receiver Clock Modeling For Kinematic-Based Precise Orbit Determination Of Low Earth Orbiters. J. Sun et al (eds.) China Satellite Navigation Conference 2014, Vol. III, Lecture Notes In Electrical Engineering 305, Doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-54740-9_12, 133-142.

Yang, Y., Yue, X., Li, Y., Rizos, C., Dempster, A.G.: “GPS receiver clock modelling for kinematic-based precise orbit determination of low earth orbiters”, in China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) 2014 Proceedings: Volume III, pp. 133–142. Springer (2014)

Ye, S. and Aboutanios, E., "Efficient peak extraction of proton NMR spectroscopy using lineshape adaptation", Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2014 IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.5661,5665, 4-9 May 2014

Abstract-refereed Conference PapersCetin E., Thompson, R.J.R., Trinkle, M. and Dempster, A.G., “Interference Detection and Localization within the GNSS Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) – System Update and Latest Field Test Results,” 27th International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014), pp. 3449-3460, September 2014.

Cetin E., Trinkle, M., Bours, A., Gabelli, G., Thompson, R.J.R., Dempster, A.G. and G.E. Corazza, “Overview of Weak Interference Detection and Localization Techniques for the GNSS Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS),” 27th International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014), pp. 2250-2259, September 2014.

Harima, K., Choy, S., Wakabayashi, Y., Kogure, S., & Rizos, C., 2014. “Transmission Of Augmentation Messages For Precise Point Positioning Utilizing Japanese Qzss Lex Signal”. 27th Int. Tech. Meeting Of The Satellite Division Of The U.S. Inst. Of Navigation, Tampa, Florida, USA, 8-12 Sept., 2467-2477.

Rizos, C., Kealy, A., Li, B., Choudhury, M., Choy, S., & Feng, Y., 2014. Locata’s Vray™ Antenna Technology – Multipath Mitigation For Indoor Positioning. 27th Int. Tech. Meeting Of The Satellite Division Of The U.S. Inst. Of Navigation, Tampa, Florida, USA, 8-12 September, 1629-1635.

Thompson R.J.R., E. Cetin and A.G. Dempster, “Detecting Amplitude Scintillation Using C/N0 Differences,” 27th International Technical Meeting of The Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014), pp. 1115-1125, September 2014.

Abstract-refereed Conference PresentationsAboutanios, E. and Osborne, B., "Grounding The UNSW Masters In Satellite Systems Engineering - The Role Of Cubesats", Proceedings of IAC 2014: Space Education and Outreach Symposium, The 65th International Astronautical Congress, Toronto, CANADA, 29 Sep - 3 Oct 2014. http://www.iafastro.net/iac/archive/browse/IAC-14/E1/4/23631/

Aboutanios, E., Osborne, B. and Dempster, A.G., “Impact of the Australian Space Hardware Regulatory Requirements on Small Satellite Missions”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Bartlett, I.S., Dixon, T., Geddes, A.J., Aboutanios, E., “UNSW BLUEsat’s Heavy Balloon Platform: A Versatile Bus for Student Near-Space Flights”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Biswas, S.K., Qiao, L. and Dempster, A.G., “Space-borne GNSS based orbit determination using a SPIRENT GNSS simulator,” Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Brandt, J. D., Osborne, B. P., Welch, C., Cetin, E., Tsafnat, N. and Barber, T., "Designing a Microgravity Fluidics Experiment for use on-board the International Space Station" IAC-14,A2,6,10,x26615, 65th International Astronautical Congress, Toronto, Canada, October 2014

Brandt, J.D., Osborne, B., Tsafnat, N. and Barber, T., “The Breakup of Liquid Jets in Reduced Gravity Conditions”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Cetin E., Qiao, L., Grassi, M. and Dempster, A.G, “Detection and Tracking of Debris using Space-borne Platforms”, 65th International Astronautical Congress, September/October 2014.

Cheong, J.W., Wu, J., Shivaramaiah, N.C., Choudhury, M, Glennon, E.P., Parkinson, K.J. and Dempster, A.G., “Real-Time Acquisition and Tracking of Galileo E1 Signals in Low Earth Orbit Scenarios", Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30 Sep-2 Oct 2014

Crowe, W., Kinkaid, N., Olsen, J. and Page, J., “Robotic swarms as means to autonomously and rapidly characterise small celestial bodies”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Glennon, E. and Parkinson, K., “The Kea V4.1 Spaceborne GPS Receiver”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014


Non-refereed Conference PresentationsKepple, J.I., Osborne, B., Tsafnat, N., Aboutanios, E. and Dempster A, “Rapid Manufactured Thermoplastic Satellite Structure for QB50 Mission”, The 16th Israel Materials Engineering Conference, Haifa, Israel 23 Feb 2014

Cheong, J.W., Glennon, E.P., Dempster, A.G., Serant, D. and Calmettes, T., “Combining Inter-node Ranges With GNSS Pseudoranges For Multipath Mitigation In C-ITS”, NAVITEC 2014 Proceedings, Noordwijk, Netherlands, 3 – 5 December 2014

Donnelly, N., Crook, C., Haasdyk, J., Harrison, C., Rizos, C., Roberts, C. and Stanaway, R. (2014) Dynamic Datum Transformations in Australia and New Zealand. In: S. Winter and C. Rizos (eds.): Research@Locate'14, Canberra, Australia, 7-9 April 2014, published at http://ceur-ws.org Haasdyk,

Donnelly, N., Crook, C., Stanaway, R., Roberts, C., Haasdyk, J. and Rizos, C. (2014) A Two-Frame National Spatial Referencing System Accounting for Geodynamics. In proceedings of IAG Commission 1 Symposium 2014: Reference Frames for Applications in Geosciences (REFAG2014). 13-17 October, Kirchberg, Luxembourg.

Donnelly, N., Dawson, J., Evans, G., Fraser, R., Haasdyk, J., Higgins, M., Morgan, L., Rizos, C., Sarib, R., Strong, S., & Turner, S., 2014. Progress Towards A New Geodetic Datum For Australia. Xxvth Fig Congress, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16-21 June, Http://Www.Fig.Net/Pub/Fig2014/Papers/Ts07a/Ts07a_Donnelly_Evans_Et_Al_7323.Pdf.

Haasdyk, J., Donnelly, N., Harrison, C., Rizos, C., Roberts, C. and Stanaway, R. (2014). Options for Modernising the Geocentric Datum of Australia. In: S. Winter and C. Rizos (eds.): Research@Locate'14, Canberra, Australia, 7-9 April 2014, published at http://ceur-ws.org

Harima, K., Choy, S., Li, Y., Grinter, T., Choudhury, M., Rizos, C., Wakabayashi, Y. and Kogure, S., 2014. Performance Of Real-Time Precise Point Positioning Using Madoca-Lex Augmentation Messages. Xxvth Fig Congress, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16-21 June, Http://Www.Fig.Net/Pub/Fig2014/Papers/Ts03b/Ts03b_Choy_Li_Et_Al_6906.Pdf.

Roberts, C. (2014) Developments towards a next generation datum for Australia, Institute of Technology, Bandung, Indonesia, 13 June

Roberts, C. (2014) Implications of a next generation datum in Australia on mining operations, Australian Institute of Mine Surveyors, Annual Conference, Sydney, 14-15 August.

Stanaway, R. and Roberts, C.A., 2014. A High-Precision Deformation Model To Support Geodetic Datum Modernisation In Australia. Iag Symposium Series No.142, Procs Iag Scientific Assembly, Potsdam, Germany, 1-6 September 2013, Springer.

Stanaway, R., Roberts, C., Rizos, C., Crook, C., Donnelly, N. and Haasdyk, J. (2014). Defining a Local Reference Frame using a Plate Motion Model and Deformation Model. In proceedings of IAG Commission 1 Symposium 2014: Reference Frames for Applications in Geosciences (REFAG2014). 13-17 October, Kirchberg, Luxembourg. – paper currently in prep

Conference PostersHu, Z., Qiao, L., Cetin, E. and Dempster, A.G., A Simplified Model for Estimating Orbits of Small Space Debris, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Kepple, J.I., Osborne, B., Tsafnat, N., Aboutanios, E. and Dempster, A.G., Rapid Manufactured Thermoplastic Satellite Structure for QB50 Mission, The 16th Israel Materials Engineering Conference , Haifa, Israel, 23-25 Feb 2014

Kepple, J.I., Tsafnat, N. and Osborne B, (eds.), 2014, 'Analysis of Failure through Fracture of the 'Liberator' Rapid Prototyped Gun', presented at The 16th Israel Materials Engineering Conference, Meyers Building, Electrical Engineering Faculty, The Technion, Haifa, Israel, 23 - 25 February 2014

Glennon, E., Cheong, J.W., Parkinson, K. and Dempster, A.G., “Fast Cold-Start Acquisition of GPS Signals Using the Delay Doppler Map Accelerator”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Hu, Z., Qiao, L., Cetin, E. and Dempster, A.G., “A Simplified Model for Estimating Orbits of Small Space Debris”, 14th Australian Space Research Conference, September 29 - October 1, 2014

Kabaran, Y., McArthur, S., Bartlett, I.S. and Kinkaid, N., “BLUEsat Robotics to Mars: Lessons on real world testing for student projects”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Nguyen T., E. Cetin, B. Osborne, N. Tsafnat and T. Dixon, “Space Based ADS-B via a Low-Earth Orbit CubeSat Constellation”, 65th International Astronautical Congress, September/October 2014.

O'Brien, S., Parkinson, K., Glennon, E., Cheong, J.W. and Dempster, A.G., “Multi-Antenna Switching for Spaceborne GPS Receivers”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Osborne, B., Aboutanios, E. and Dempster, A.G., “Impact of the Australian space hardware regulatory requirements on small satellite missions”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Osborne, B., Kepple, J., Tsafnat, N., Aboutanios, E. and Dempster, A.G., “Design of a space compatible 3d printed satellite structure”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Parkinson, K.J., Glennon, E.P. and Dempster, A.G., "The Kea GNSS Receiver for Spacecraft Operations", Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Qiao, L., Cetin, E., Hu, Z. and Dempster, A.G., “Prompt response for space collision assessment: Detection of Space Debris Using Space-borne Platforms”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

Qiao, L., Osborne, B. and Dempster, A.G., “Design and simulation of attitude determination of UNSW ECO CubeSat using EKF”, Presented at the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia, 30-September - 2 October 2014

OpinionOsborne, B., Dempster, A. and Aboutanios, E., Investing in space: what the UK Space Agency can teach Australia (The Conversation, 24 July 2014) https://theconversation.com/investing-in-space-what-the-uk-space-agency-can-teach-australia-28559

Aboutanios, E., How will Inmarsat bring in-flight internet to Europe? (The Conversation, 11 June 2014) https://theconversation.com/how-will-inmarsat-bring-in-flight-internet-to-europe-27697

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Documents

Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER)...annual report, covering our fourth full calendar year of operation, 2014. After the trials of 2013 when many staff left in