×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×

Alumni

Alumni
×

Search

×

Research Opportunities

Additive Manufacturing & Space Materials

The CSRA is able to develop space components from an initial concept to the final design through the use of additive manufacturing. These components can be manufactured at AFIT using space-rated polymers as well as aerospace metals in order to comply with the requirements set by the mission.

For more information, please contact Maj Ryan Kemnitz.

Tours & Demos

‘Objet Eden 500V’ 3D polymer PolyJet printer ‘Fortus 450mc’ 3D polymer fused filament fabrication ‘Ultimaker 5’ 3D polymer fused filament fabrication ‘Concept Laser cusing M2’ 3D metal laser powder bed fusion printer

Additive Manufacturing & Space Materials

Satellite Design & Build

Satellite Design & Build

The CSRA has completed 5 satellite missions from concept » design » build » test » delivery. Students, faculty, and staff work together on developing satellite missions. Chassis are designed in-house and created at the AFIT machine shop. Circuit boards are developed and prototyped in the electrical engineering lab before being sent out for fabrication. Everything is assembled in a Class 10000 clean room.

For more information, please contact Mr. Chris Lomanno.


Space Flight Qualification

The CSRA has a class 10,000 clean room and the facilities and equipment to fully qualify small satellites for space flight. A vibration table emulates the launch environment and verifies the build of the satellite. A thermal vacuum chamber simulates the environment of space and alternately heats and cools the satellite. An anechoic chamber allows for RF testing.

For more information, please contact Mr. Chris Sheffield.

Solar simulator tour Vibration table tour Vacuum chamber tour
Space Flight Qualification

Space Propulsion

Space Propulsion

The CSRA has a 9.8 cubic meter vacuum chamber dedicated to testing Ion and Hall thrusters using Xenon or Krypton propellants, as well as smaller (0.6 and 0.3 cubic meter) chambers for smaller thrusters or those with condensable propellants. These chambers can reach approximately 1/1,000,000,000 of an atmosphere, a near-analog of low Earth orbit space. Using thrust measurements, conventional plasma instruments, high speed (1,000,000 frames per second) cameras, laser based instruments and microwave instruments, thruster performance and the behavior of plasmas within the thrusters are analyzed.

For more information, please contact Dr. Carl Hartsfield.

Vacuum chamber tour

Space Mission Modeling, Simulation & Analysis

Whether trying to optimize space situational awareness architectures, develop tactics and techniques for space, or conduct experiments to better understand space scenarios, modeling and simulation is the tool of choice. The CSRA uses a variety of state of the art tools for its M&S efforts ranging from STK and MATLAB for modeling, world class high performance(super) computers for batch processing, and Paraview for visualization.

For more information, please contact Mr. David Meyer.

Space Mission Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
Return to the top of the page

Air Force Institute of Technology
2950 Hobson Way
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH 45433-7765
Commercial: 937-255-6565 | DSN: 785-6565