This note is a follow-up to the many questions I received at the Feb ASRAS meeting Friday night on how the radio telescope project (Solar Spectrometer) is going and the other projects I’m involved with at RIT.

As most ASRAS members know, I retired from the board so as to be able to concentrate on bringing the Solar Telescope project to fruition in Ionia. This RT project has been making its way through the different development phases while at RIT in a program called Multidisciplinary Senior Design (MSD). It is a process driven class, where seniors of different majors (ME, EE, CS, etc.) work on projects in a team environment. Just like real life in Industry. I’ve been both the customer for their efforts and mentor for two years.

Little did I realize at the time, I would be asked to rejoin RIT (3rd time around) as a mentor for other projects given my background, and the fact there’s been a spike in enrollment of this class (up 30%).

Below please find a link to the three projects I’m presently ‘shepherding’;

Solar Spectrometer;

A radio astronomy project to study the RF signature of Sunspots.

http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P18571/public/Home

K- Mirror

An upgrade to the original prototype RT dish for ALMA (Chile) on Kitt Peak owned by the U of Arizona to convert it to an imaging RT spectrometer running at 200 – 300 GHz.

http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P18572/public/Home

Hybrid Rocket Motor

Project to develop a hybrid rocket motor (for a yet to be designed rocket) to go to 30K ft for a nationwide college IREC competition to be held in New Mexico in 2019.

http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P18102/public/Home