astronauticsnow.com

Mike Gruntman's web site on Astronautics, Space Technology, Rocketry, and History

  About Mike Gruntman

  Mike's books        Mike's videos on satellite orbits (>1.2×10^6 views on YouTube)

Sputnik    Explorer    Vanguard    Astronautics    Missile defense    Baikonur Tyuratam    Saryshagan    Rocket equation    Rocket espionage    U-2    USC

rocket science stuff

Mike Gruntman on  LinkedIn  Facebook  YouTube     in Wikipedia        Mike's LinkedIn articles

It is time to build a space-based missile defense layer (op-ed)

160+ problems with detailed solutions Fundamentals of Space Missions book preview Magnitudes of stars and satellites. The solar system. Coordinate systems and time. Plane and solid angles. Space environment and spacecraft interactions. Satellite atmospheric drag. Solar radiation pressure. Gravitational field. The Earth. Basics of orbital mechanics. Orbital elements, transfers, and maneuvers. Orbit evolution and common orbits. Space mission geometry.

Fundamentals of Space Missions – 3-page info (pdf) – list of problems

MS ASTE

Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering

Mike's classes at USC:      ASTE 520 Spacecraft Design   and     ASTE 575 Rocket and Spacecraft Propulsion (old ASTE 470)

Astronautical, aeronautical, and aerospace engineering degree programs in the United States

Make the World a Better Place  –  for conservatives and true classical (non-socialist) liberals only

Cost of Communism    Dupes and Fellow Travelers    Munich Agreement    Two cultures and science illiteracy   Rocket espionage   Soviet espionage in U.S.   State (Bias) of U.S. Media   Freedom is not free

Marxist and Other Radical Parties   Rocket Scientists' Voter Guide for 2020s   Socialism, Academia, and Intellectuals   Sic transit gloria universitatum   Say It Right

Numbers

         

other rocket science stuff

  Space program in Israel        Israel history (essential library)  

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (left) at the 49th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Fla. (January 5, 2011) and Appollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin (right) at ASTE event (December 13, 2011)

How to get the rocket-scientist T-shirt.

  The true story ... Now it can be told

   Videos – satellite orbits   

More than 1,000,000 views – yes, >10^6 – on YouTube alone from 2007 to 2016

Some selected videos on satellite orbits

	GPS constellation	Geostationary GEO orbit	Prograde and retrograde orbits	Molniya orbit	Effect of solar radiation on satellite orbits	Molniya communications relay

Mike's books      

	Blazing the Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry, AIAA, Reston, Va., 2004 Winner of the Luigi Napolitano Award (2006) from the International Academy of Astronautics available at 800+ libraries worldwide		From Astronautics to Cosmonautics, Space Pioneers Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Ary Sternfeld, Booksurge, North Charleston, S.C., 2007 Nominated (2008) for the Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society		Enemy Amongst Trojans. A Soviet Spy at USC, Figueroa Press, Los Angeles, Calif., 2010
	Intercept 1961. The Birth of Soviet Missile Defense, AIAA, Reston, Va., 2015 available at 450+ libraries worldwide		My Fifteen Years at IKI, the Space Research Institute: Position-Sensitive Detectors and Energetic Neutral Atoms Behind the Iron Curtain , Interstellar Trail Press, 2022		Fundamentals of Space Missions: Problems with Solutions , Interstellar Trail Press, 2007

Mike's book chapters  

Space Education

Mike Gruntman is the founder of the Astronautics Program at the University of Southern California (USC). He has been leading its nationally prominent flagship component, Master of Science in Astronatical Engineering (MS ASTE), since mid-1990s (pdf).
For several years Mike had been calling for creation of independent academic departments in space engineering in U.S. universities. In 2004, the USC program was reorganized into a new independent academic unit, today's Department of Astronautical Engineering. This is a unique development in space engineering education in the United States, and this is a unique department. It offers Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Science (Minor), Master of Science, Engineer, and PhD degrees and Graduate Certificate in astronautical engineering.

Mike served as the founding chairman, 2004–2007, of the new department and guided its spectacular growth. Mission accomplished! He chaired the department again from 2016–2019.

During the first 18 years of the new department (2014-2022) it awarded more than 800 degrees Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering, a significant contribution to workforce development for space and defense industries. A number of students graduated with Bachelor's and PhD degrees as well.

Mike's graduate course on space systems is among largest in this engineering field in the country. More than 2200 graduate students took this class from 1994-2021. Mike also teaches short courses on fundamentals of space systems for government and industry.

A recent (2022) book includes more than 160 problems with detailed solutions from this university course (and enhancing short courses).

The journey continues – Ad Astra!

Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENA) in Space  –  astronauticsnow.com/ENA/

Measurement of energetic neutral atoms (ENA) in space has emerged as a powerful tool to remotely probe hot plasmas and populations of energetic ions such as planetary magnetospheres and the interstellar (galactic) boundary of the heliosphere. The original bold vision of ENA imaging emerged in the late 1970s. About 20 years of concept refinement and development of enabling instrumentation followed to overcome measurement challenges. Mike Gruntman played a leading role in this development. NASA's IMAGE mission successfully demonstrated the instrumentation and the power of the experimental concept by imaging Earth's magnetosphere and Cassini imaged the magnetosphere of Saturn in ENA fluxes. Two ENA imagers are launched in 2007 and 2008 on the NASA TWINS mission to conduct, for the first time, stereoscopic imaging of the Earth magnetosphere. NASA's IBEX mission, launched in 2008, mapped for the first time the interstellar (galactic) frontier of the solar system in ENA fluxes. The Science magazine highlighted IBEX discoveries on its cover in November 2009.

  Energetic Neutral Atom Imaging: The Next Step, 2012 (15 min video)

The journey to ENA imaging began in the mid 1970s

ENA tutorial

Among Mike's main contributions to ENA and EUV imaging are

(a) discovery (1982) of the disturbance of the supersonic interstellar wind by the neutral solar wind flux (pdf)  – the effect that is today routinely accounted for in global heliospheric models and possibly contributing to the yet unexplained heliospheric ribbon;

(b) prediction (1992) of the anisotropy of heliospheric ENA fluxes, the effect that has enabled heliosphere ENA imaging (pdf)  – first implemented and demonstrated by IBEX;

(c) part of effort (2001) in definitive formulation of the concept of heliosphere boundary ENA imaging in an article in the Journal of Geophysical Research (pdf)  – a key to proposing the winning science objectives for the IBEX mission;

(d) experimental demonstration (1981) of ENA detection with energies down to 0.5 keV (1.5 orders of magnitude down from the lowest energies of >20 keV at the time) using thin foils ans start-stop time-of-flight (TOF) techniques (pdf)  –  the breakthrough technique that enabled ENA imaging instruments on the IMAGE (MENA) and TWINS missions;

(e) experimental demonstration (1981) of measuring absolute particle detection efficiency without calibration (pdf)  –  the technique that is used on IBEX (IBEX-Hi);

(f) spearheading the effort to formulate and propose the first dedicated ENA space experiment and building the first generation ENA instruments (early and mid-1980s) to detect the neutral component of the solar wind and heliospheric ENA fluxes from the interstellar boundary of the solar system (pdf)  –  the flight experiment (experiment GAS njointly with MPAe and CBK, instruments GAS-1, GAS-2, GAS-3, and block GAS-E) was built but never flown in space due to "political" headwinds (first scheduled for ill-fated Phobos mission to be launched in 1986 and then removed and rescheduled for never-launched Relikt-2; two Phobos spacecreaft were launched in 1988 and were lost); IBEX measured for the first time heliopsheric ENAs in 2009; the neutral solar wind (pdf) is yet to be observed experimentally;

(g) developing a concept (1981) and demonstrating (1995) suppression of UV and EUV background photon fluxes (main contributors to signal noise) in ENA instruments by diffraction filtering (pdf);  – the technique that enabled ENA imaging instruments on the IMAGE (MENA) and TWINS missions;

(h) proposing (1983) and developing in detail (1991) a concept of the unique technique for detection of low-energy neutral atoms by their surface cionversion to negative ions (pdf);  – the technique that enabled low-energy ENA imaging on the IMAGE (LENA) and IBEX (IBEX-Lo) missions;

(i) development of the concept (1998) of EUV mapping of the heliopause (pdf);

(j) development of the concept of and demonstrating a breakthrough enabling design (2005) of an instrument for EUV mapping of the three-dimensional solar wind and the heliopause (pdf);

(k) ruling out (1993) use of coded-apertures for ENA imaging of the magnetosphere (pdf).

Mike's 1997 review article on imaging of space plasmas in ENA fluxes remains to this day a main publication in the field.

About Mike Gruntman

Dr. Mike Gruntman is professor of astronautics and professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He is the founder of the USC Astronautics Program. Mike served the first (founding) Chairman (2004–2007) of the USC Department of Astronautical Engineering and chaired the department again from 2016–2019. Mike is involved in a number of research and development programs in space science and space technology. He authored and co-authored more than 300 scholarly publications, including 6 books, in the areas of astronautics, space physics, space technology, scientific instrumentation, space sensors, rocketry, history of space, rocketry, and missile defense, and astronautical education.

History  –  astronauticsnow/history

Various events, documents, and publications related (and a very few unrelated) to history of spacecraft and rocketry.

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