The Wichita Space Initiative welcomes you to the next talk in our Space Exploration Lecture Series! WSU Assitant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Atri Dutta, will present his lecture "How to Fly a Spacecraft". Dr. Dutta's talk will take place at 1:00 pm on Thursday, February 28th, in Rhatigan Student Center room 264.

Abstract: The foundation of modern-day astrodynamics has its roots in the works of Kepler, Newton, Lagrange and other notable scientists and mathematicians. The traditional description of the path of a space object is in terms of geometric parameters (orbit size and shape, and inclination of orbital plane) and a set of Euler angles. The space industry has adopted these classical orbital elements or related transformations to describe a spacecraft’s path. A spacecraft can use its propulsion system to alter its path, and the design of spacecraft maneuvers (especially low-thrust) require the solution of a complex optimal control problem. Our recent work at WSU Control, Optimization Research and Education (CORE) Laboratory have established a new description of orbital motion using dynamical coordinates that are specially suitable for the solution of these optimal control problems. The talk will provide a brief overview of the history of astrodynamics, techniques for spacecraft trajectory optimization, the new dynamic model and its application to different space missions.

Bio: Dr. Atri Dutta is an Assistant Professor in the department of Aerospace Engineering at Wichita State University. All his degrees are in Aerospace Engineering, with Bachelors from IIT Kharag- pur, and MS and PhD from Georgia Tech. Before joining Wichita State, he was a post-doctoral research associate at Princeton University. He was a summer research associate at the Air Force Research Laboratory last year. He is a member of AIAA, AAS and IEEE, and serves on the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical Committee.