Lecture to Focus on Using Glass Shaped by Light to Create Tiny Satellite Systems

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Satellites provide us with lots of information about our planet, but they can be expensive, bulky and heavy. Researchers like Po-Hao Adam Huang, a member of the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences and professor of mechanical engineering, are working to shrink satellite systems to get more power from small products.

Huang will present a lecture on his research at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, in the Space Center Theater (Old Museum Building, Room 201) as part of the fall 2008 Arkansas Public Lectures in Space and Planetary Science. Admission is free and open to all members of the university community and the public.

Huang has been a member of the technical staff at the Aerospace Corp. since 2000. With the Aerospace Corp., Huang’s research focuses on the use of photo-structurable glass ceramics – materials that can be shaped by using light – as multifunctional materials for satellites at the pico- and nano-scale. His research interests are in multi-scale hardware technologies for aerospace and robotic applications.

The maturation of micro-electro-mechanical systems enabled scientists and engineers to create small, more precise analytical tools such as lab-on-a-chip systems for biological and chemical sciences. Systems like these often provide chemical and biological analysis with smaller working volumes and do so faster, cheaper and more accurately than larger systems. Such a platform can be extended to a miniaturized spacecraft design that uses nearly identical technology developed for lab-on-a-chip systems and the development of pico- and nano-satellites, with weights of one kilogram and 10 kilograms respectively.

The use of large arrays of such spacecraft may match or exceed the capabilities of existing expensive, bulky and heavy satellites. Creating these spacecraft with photo-structurable glass ceramics as the primary structural layer will allow them to be mass-produced cheaply and rapidly.

In his lecture, Huang will discuss a terrestrial test prototype, called Co-Orbital Satellite Assistant. The goal for two to three years from now is to adopt this satellite technology for an in-orbit student-built satellite at the University of Arkansas.

Huang received his doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006.

His talk is titled “Photo Structurable Glass Ceramics Enabled Micro-Fluidic Thruster Systems for Pico/Nano-Satellites”

Visit http://spacecenter.uark.edu to learn more.