PhD student wins best paper award at astrodynamics conference

UB PhD student receiving Breakwell Student Paper Award.

PhD student Grant Hecht receives the Breakwell Student Paper Award.

Published November 10, 2023

By Sarah D'lorio

Grant Hecht, a PhD student in aerospace engineering, won the Breakwell Student Paper Award at the 2023 AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference. Hecht is the first ever PhD student from the University at Buffalo to receive the award, which he earned for his paper titled “Q-Law Control with Sun-Angle Constraint for Solar Electric Propulsion.”

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“The novel control law incorporates sun-angle constraints to ensure the solar panels are properly aligned with the sun, which is necessary for an SEP system to produce propulsive force. ”
Grant Hecht, PhD Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

In the paper, a Q-Law based feedback control law is proposed for designing trajectories for spacecraft equipped with a Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system.

“The novel control law incorporates sun-angle constraints to ensure the solar panels are properly aligned with the sun, which is necessary for an SEP system to produce propulsive force,” says Hecht.

Hecht co-authored the paper with his advisor Eleonora Botta, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Through a series of analytical expressions and modeling, the authors determined that the proposed algorithm is capable of efficiently producing a near-optimal transfer trajectory with controls that ensure the solar panels can properly generate power.

Hecht is a recipient of 2023 SUNY Graduate Research Empowering and Accelerating Talent (GREAT) Awards, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a NASA Pathways Student Trainee at Goddard Space Flight Center. He completed his BS degree in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Hecht presented the paper at 2023 AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference, hosted by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and cohosted by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), which was held in Big Sky, Mont. from August 13-17.