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Embry-Riddle is one of 11 colleges chosen to compete in Space Force Hyperspace Challenge

Mark Harper
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
There are perhaps millions of pieces of debris from objects humans launched into space. The debris pieces, known as space junk, are orbiting the Earth, and pose a problem for spaceships. An Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University team is competing in a U.S. Space Force challenge trying to determine the best ways of detecting debris so as to avoid collisions.

A team of students and faculty members from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will compete in the U.S. Space Force's first collegiate Hyperspace Challenge.

Over the next month, the team headed by Troy Henderson, associate professor of aerospace engineering, will participate in meetings with Space Force officials and attempt to offer solutions to a problem faced by space travelers: How to avoid collisions with space junk.

"We have the opportunity to get our ideas and our background in front of a lot of the key players in the Space Force," Henderson told The News-Journal on Friday. "It's going to hopefully lead to future opportunities for Embry-Riddle students, whether we win or not."

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That's what impresses university President Barry Butler.

“This early immersion in research that will minimize risks and optimize the effectiveness of Space Force is the kind of discovery-driven education that sets our aerospace engineers apart when they enter the workforce,” Butler stated in a news release. "Our selection reflects Embry-Riddle’s growing prominence as a space-focused research institution.”

The ERAU team, which will consist of students ranging from the university's sophomore and junior levels all the way through Ph.D. candidates, will compete in what's called the "rapid initial orbit determination" challenge.

"As the economic value of space assets ... increases, it is critically important to ensure flight safety by rapidly determining the orbits of newly detected debris objects," the competition's website explains. "While passive optical sensors routinely provide angles-only data to the Space Surveillance Network, augmenting current systems with range and range-rate information is one way to speed up the initial orbit determination process."

In other words, space vehicles have cameras and sensors that can detect other objects nearby. But how that imagery is processed and then related to the motion of the spacecraft becomes a math problem, Henderson said.

Doing it accurately and quickly is the solution the Space Force is seeking.

Troy Henderson, associate professor of aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Henderson has assembled a team of people from aerospace engineering, including professor Riccardo Bevilacqua, as well as Sirani Perera, associate professor of mathematics, and Kshitij Khare, associate professor of statistics at the University of Florida.

Space Force challenge offers $100,000 prize for finalists

The Hyperspace Challenge offers $100,000 prizes for finalists. The final presentations will be in November, with a showcase of space innovations run by the Air Force Research Laboratory and CNM Ingenuity, as part of the new SpaceWERX for the U.S. Space Force, set for December.

The International Space Station, shown in 2011, approximately 220 miles above Earth, was narrowly missed that year by an unidentified piece of debris, which came within 820 feet of striking the fragile orbiter.

Embry-Riddle will be competing against: New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico; Sfluour Inc. of Albany, New York;  Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey; SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York; Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas; the University of Texas at El Paso; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; the University of Cincinnati in Ohio; the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs; and Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Remzi Seker, associate provost for research, said landing an ERAU team in the competition is validation.

"This accomplishment by Dr. Henderson and his team is not only in line with our mission and values," Seker said, "but also indicative of the purposeful nature of our research enterprise."

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