AE Seminar
Advanced Space Weather Characterization
for Satellite Operations!
featuring
Piyush Mehta
Associate Professor | Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering | West Virginia University
Tuesday, February 18
11 am - 12 pm
Guggenheim 442
About the Seminar:
Space Weather is the combined study of the Sun, the solar wind, and the geospace environment that can influence technological systems and endanger human life and health. Known impacts of space weather include radiation exposure for astronauts and civil aviation passengers and flight crew, damage to electric power grids, navigation/communication degradation, satellite charging and damage, and satellite operations. Space weather affects several aspects of satellite operations in low Earth orbit (LEO) including mission design and planning, catalogue maintenance, forensic analysis, policy, and collision avoidance. The US Space Policy Directive-3, National STM Policy has emphasized the necessity “to make significant contributions to establish a quality threshold for actionable collision avoidance warning to minimize false alarms”. Space weather modeling is the largest source of uncertainty and a grand challenge in LEO where the majority active satellite population resides. Current operational system for space weather is not accessible for non-DoD use, is limited in its fidelity, and has no framework for robust uncertainty quantification. This talk will cover recent progress towards addressing these limitations and advancing space weather modeling and characterization for satellite operations.
About the Speaker:
Prof. Mehta is currently an associate professor in the department of mechanical, materials, and aerospace engineering at West Virginia University. He is the director of the Astrodynamics, Space ScIence and Space Technology (ASSIST) Lab and the Center for Innovation in Space Exploration and Research (CISER) with interests at the intersection of astrodynamics, space weather, data science, and space safety and sustainability. His group is supported by funding from NSF, NASA, DoD, DoE, and IARPA. He is the recipient of the 2021 NSF CAREER award, a class of 2025 AIAA Associate Fellow, and a member of the Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG), a Federal Advisory Committee for the White House Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) Subcommittee. He has co-authored 50 peer-reviewed publications and delivered more than 35 invited talks across the world. He received his PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Kansas in 2013.