Michael Buchwald, an undergraduate student and researcher in Clarkson’s Astronautics and Robotics Laboratory (ASTRO Lab), received the Aerospace Division’s Distinguished Student Paper Award for his paper on Advancing Engineering Education through University Ground Stations at the 2023 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference. This research project is overseen by Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the ASTRO Lab Michael Bazzocchi.
“I am thrilled to receive the distinguished student paper award. I have been working on this project for several years with Professor Bazzocchi and am so excited that aerospace education professionals found my paper to be a worthwhile read,” Buchwald said.
Ground stations are essential for space missions to conduct data retrieval, telemetry, tracking, and control. In the past, ground station use has been limited to government and private space sectors due to their cost. As a result, this has led to few laboratory activities that employ ground station technologies in engineering programs. More recently, the cost of ground station components has decreased, along with an increase in publicly available designs, making ground stations more accessible to universities. In his paper, Buchwald investigated the integration of ground stations into university curricula and outlined an approach to leverage ground stations to improve educational outcomes for aerospace engineering students.
This research was funded in part by the Clarkson Honors HEES Scholarship and the New York Space Grant Student Support Fellowship.
Read more about the Astronautics and Robotics Laboratory (ASTRO Lab) at astrolabresearch.com.
