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Retrofitting Farm Equipment With Airflow Sensors
No full textIn the Fall of 2024, our farm in Idaho upgraded our equipment from conventional seeding drills to more modern and sophisticated air seeder drills, particularly the John Deere 1900 Commodity Air Cart and John Deere 730 Air Disk Drill. In our case, this equipment was purchased used at an auction and had been a little modified. One modern convenience that this certain 730 Drill did not come with was a blockage monitoring system to alert the operator that a seed distribution tube was no longer distributing seeds. My question the became: Can an affordable, reliable airflow sensor system be designed and installed to detect blockages in an air hose on this John Deere drill? As an engineer, the answer is yes, which then led to my next question: what is the most effective sensor type (mechanical, thermal, pressure differential ect.) for real-time blockage detection in this application? After some consideration, I determined that a mechanical switch would work best for this application. Upon further research, I settled on using an AFS-222 airflow switch. The simplicity of this instrument was desirable in that it already came with the eletrical switch and diaphragm on which it operates. It is also preferable because it is not only adjustable but also outputs only whether or not the sufficient amount of airflow is flowing. Due to these reasons, it would be a cheaper, low maintenance, reliable system that can be easily retrofitted to our current needs. I built a prototype model out of PVC pipe and a borrowed blow dryer before going out to the farm to test the system on the equipment itself. Both tests worked successfully, indicating that my design can be implemented for a cost less than that of the typical system sold at dealerships
Death in a Small Town
No full textToday, those who experience the loss of a loved one are far removed from the process of nursing the dying and watching over the dead. These tasks are relegated to professionals with specific education, certifications, and licensing. With advances in medical technology and hospitals in most communities staffed with well-trained doctors and nurses, the process of dying is more prolonged than that of the late-19th and early-20th centuries in rural small towns. Additionally, with the rise of the death care industry family involvement is often limited to choosing a casket and organizing services. In some ways death has become an invisible and taboo process. The further removed modern society has become from death and dying the more uncomfortable we have become discussing wishes for end-of-life care, advanced directives, and the disposition of remains. The avoidance of the topic leaves family members with questions about what their loved ones want regarding heroic life saving measures and funeral plans. Recently though, there has been a resurgence in the idea of the “good death,” one in which the dying individual may choose to remain at home, passing without medical intervention. This project examined the rites, traditions, and practices of death and dying in a small rural western town. Using Vernal, Utah as a case study I built a virtual museum exhibit using ArtSteps, 3-D Models, and images. The exhibit presents information about how citizens of Vernal and the surrounding area treated death during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, a time when death was commonly discussed in private and public. Symbols of death and remembrance were often on display in the family parlor. Many thought about and wished for the “good death,” a peaceful passing at home surrounded by loved ones. While not all deaths were peaceful, most took place in the family home. For much of history death was a family event: loved ones were cared for by families during illness and after accident. After a passing, women would wash and prepare the body for interment. In in the early days of settlement in remote small towns like Vernal, burials would often be on the family property. There was an intimate and personal relationship with death. Grief was expressed outwardly through strictly prescribed dress, social customs, and behavior. While Victorian and Edwardians put an immense amount of pressure on families to demonstrate grief properly, through examining their attitudes some more healthy attitudes can be adopted therefore, at the end of the exhibit visitors are asked to question their relationship with death and given resources to better know how to discuss their wishes with their loved ones. Though this exhibit relies on the more macabre interests in the public, it can be a useful means to open an important dialogue that will benefit families. Being prepared for the circumstances of loss can make the transition more manageable
Door - To - Door Summer Sales and Other Summer Employment: A Cost and Benefit Analysis
Get PDFDoor-to-door summer sales is heavily marketed to college students, especially on university campuses in Utah. These employment options are marketed as having high financial rewards while giving students the opportunity to develop their professional skills. In this study, I examine whether these expected rewards are delivered and if door-to-door summer sales is a viable position for college students in comparison to other summer employment. Specifically, I focus on the financial benefits and skills gained from both job types as well as determinants for students who participate in door-to-door summer sales versus other summer employment. My findings indicate that there is indeed higher financial benefit for participants in door-to-door summer sales than those who pursue other summer employment. Findings about skills gained showed clear differences between the two participant groups. Results highlighted clear job structure differences between door-to-door summer sales and other summer employment. The determinant findings showed that participants in door-to-door summer sales were driven mainly by extroversion. This study deepens the conversation around summer employment for students by identifying the specific benefits and personality traits linked to door-to-door sales participation
Living Pantry: Affordable Housing and Traditional Agriculture
No full textUtah is a beautiful and unique landscape with a vibrant food history that is, as I write this in 2025, undergoing some dramatic changes in both climate and population.
The population is projected to almost double by 2065, increasing by 2.8 million people over a 50-year period. Cache Valley, in the Northern part of the state, is projected to increase its population by 93% in that same time frame (Perlich et. al., 2017).
This population growth represents a huge increase in demand for housing, but while demand grows, the market becomes less affordable, with the median home price 6.26 times greater than the median income. Nine out of ten renters were unable to afford rent in 2023 (Salt Lake Tribune, 2023). and homelessness is on the rise, reaching a new record high every year (Banta, 2024).
This growth impacts our environment and increases demand on natural resources in a changing climate, particularly land and water which are both finite and affected by human consumption. Utah is the second driest state in the nation with some of the worst air quality (American Lung Association, 2023) and is grappling with drought and its effects on the keystone ecology of the Great Salt Lake (Abbott, et. al., 2023).
Agriculture is intrinsically tied to land and water resources as well. Although agricultural land has inherent value for producing food, it is particularly well suited to development and is disappearing under the structures and hardscapes of urbanization at an alarming rate. If we carry on with normal development by 2040, 18 million acres of farmland across the United States will be irrevocably lost to low density housing and urban sprawl (Xie et al., 2023). This is not only a loss of the physical place to grow food, which harms our food security (one in eight adults and one in six children struggle with food insecurity in Utah) but it is also a loss of food culture, which harms our individual health and connection to the land (Michigan State University, 2021).
Issues of water, food, health, biodiversity and climate change are all interdependent. Any solutions will be found looking holistically with full cost accounting rather than segregating them into individual problems (IPBES, 2024).
Despite the foundational importance of food and the projected population growth, there has been limited exploration of how Utah might combine affordable residential development and traditional agriculture to celebrate our cultural heritage and meet our future needs.
Doing so would allow us to use our natural resources responsibly and reciprocally and supply affordable housing to an underserved and growing market. This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive look through design research at the intersection of these issues by designing an agriculture-centric residential community in Logan, Utah
Using CAPSTONE’s Mission Extension to Navigate the Future of Cislunar Technology
Get PDFLaunched in late June 2022, the Cislunar Autonomous Position System Technology, Operations, and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) has been operating in the Earth-Moon, Southern L2 Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) for more than two years. After successfully completing its primary mission objectives, CAPSTONE was awarded a 15-month mission extension in September of 2024. The goal of this extension was to continue to use CAPSTONE to provide valuable and informative data to the NASA Gateway program and leverage the platform to raise the TRL of several cislunar technologies. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the operational data obtained throughout the mission, including navigation performance, maneuver strategies, on-orbit test results of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS), and overviews the ongoing onboard technology demonstrations.
Prior to the CAPSTONE spacecraft’s launch, Advanced Space conducted a series of analyses to quantify expected navigation and maneuver performance and to qualify the different methodologies, which have been used to operate CAPSTONE in the NRHO. This paper presents a retrospective analysis that quantifies the as-flown operations performance in comparison to pre-flight expectations and highlights how these operational strategies have been adapted and used to support the NASA Gateway team. Additionally, a detailed characterization of the CAPS performance will be described. These ongoing experiments involve the spacecraft communicating using a two-way, coherent signal to obtain range and Doppler navigation measurements that can be processed onboard for absolute state estimation. This study characterizes the results of crosslink experiments to date. Analyses showing potential performance of future iterations of crosslink navigation using CAPS are also highlighted to preview a path forward for autonomous deep-space navigation.
Finally, the mission extension technology demonstrations focused on spacecraft autonomy and navigation will be briefed. A focus will be placed on the concept of navigating a spacecraft in the cislunar regime using optical measurements derived from the Moon’s horizon and demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques using real imagery from the CAPSTONE spacecraft. Generated optical-only orbit determination solutions for CAPSTONE are presented and demonstrate the possibility of autonomously navigating the spacecraft, as well as potential future space vehicles, such as NASA’s planned Gateway space station, in the NRHO.
By continuing operations, CAPSTONE provides a low-cost, high-impact opportunity to refine critical technologies for upcoming lunar missions, contributing to the broader goals of NASA, commercial lunar initiatives, and commercial partners in cislunar space
An Optimal Mapping Method for Earth-Observation Constellations Using a Maximum Bipartite Matching Algorithm
Get PDFPoster presented during the 2025 SmallSat Conference
Development of a Polarization-Based Optical Communications Ground Station for the PULSE-A CubeSat
No full textThe Polarization-modUlated Laser Satellite Experiment (PULSE-A) is the University of Chicago’s student-led mission to demonstrate an optical downlink at a data rate of 1 to 10 Mbps using circular polarization shift keying (CPolSK). PULSE-A comprises a 3U CubeSat bus carrying a \u3c 1.5U optical transmission terminal and a dual optical-RF ground station. The ground station (GS) system consists of the optical ground station (OGS) and the RF ground station (RFGS). The RFGS is responsible for standard communications and control tasks, while the experimental OGS receives the optical transmission from the satellite’s payload.
To perform satellite-to-ground optical communications, the OGS needs to track, receive, and decode the transmitted signal while providing its own beacon, which allows the satellite to track the OGS. These requirements are accomplished by four assemblies within the OGS: tracking, polarization state preparation, signal decoding, and beacon. The tracking assembly collects, condenses, and collimates incoming laser light from the satellite using an 11” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and an optical assembly, which performs fine tracking of the satellite. The polarization state preparation assembly separates light by its left- or right-handed circularly polarized states. The received circularly polarized transmission laser from the payload passes through a quarter-wave plate, converting it into linearly polarized light. This light is then split by a polarizing beam splitter into two separate paths, corresponding to data sent with left- or right-handed circular polarization. Next, the signal-decoding assembly converts the separated polarized light into two voltage channels. These two channels correspond to 1 or 0 bits, which are then digitized by an FPGA. The GS beacon assembly includes the ground beacon laser that enables the satellite to track the ground station.
Since optical communications are directional, the OGS must track the satellite with a pointing accuracy of 1.4 mrad. This requires the GS to conduct a high-precision pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) sequence. First, the RFGS receives telemetry and orbital data, which is passed to the OGS to estimate the satellite’s orbital path. The OGS then coarsely points the telescope towards the satellite’s predicted position. Then, the satellite illuminates the telescope with a beacon and a transmission laser. The payload beacon laser enables a feedback loop which maintains pointing accuracy by moving the telescope and a fast-steering mirror within the OGS in response to deviations in the laser’s position from the center of a tracking camera. This enables the OGS to perform fine corrections to its orbital predictions. As a consequence, the OGS tracks the transmission laser, enabling it to decode the CPolSK transmission.
We present an overview of the design of the GS, focusing on implementing a polarization-based optical communications receiver. This work explores the design of polarization-based optics for space-to-ground optical communications with emphasis on the challenges associated with the directionality of optical communications. We will also cover our independent studies on circular polarization, and how the results affect our design choices
Prototyping a Sparse-Aperture, Segmented, Parabolic Primary Mirror Telescope for SUPERSHARP
No full textThe SUPERSHARP mission concept for large, unfolding, lightweight, sparse-aperture space telescopes is inspired by the ongoing search for life in the universe [1]. The SuperSharp company is developing small-satellite versions of this concept for use in thermal infrared for Earth observation with applications in climate change research [2]. The motivation of my research is to help advance the alignment techniques and procedures of this technology for future applications in space observation at shorter wavelengths; this will be accomplished through the development and alignment of a laboratory prototype of a sparse-aperture, parabolic primary mirror telescope (see Figure 1) using the alignment procedures described below
SkyForge Core: A Triple Modular Redundant Computing Architecture for Small Satellites
No full textAs small satellite missions grow in complexity, there is increasing demand for greater onboard computational performance. Traditional radiation-hardened processors, while reliable, are expensive, slow, and suffer from long procurement timelines. In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf processors like the Raspberry Pi offer high performance at low cost but are vulnerable to radiation-induced faults such as single-event upsets. SkyForge Core is an experimental computing system that addresses this challenge by integrating three Raspberry Pi Zero W units into a triple modular redundant architecture. The system executes identical tasks on each Pi, compares outputs using majority voting, and identifies discrepancies. If a failure occurs, the system continues operation while executing a recovery operation on the affected processor. This architecture will be demonstrated aboard a Near Space Launch smallsat in early 2026. SkyForge Core aims to validate the architecture, collect data on failure rates in low earth orbit, and characterize system performance in space