ECE Professor Hamid Krim has been awarded over a million dollars by the United States Missile Defense Agency for research on the problem of space debris detection.
According to Professor Krim, “Space is a precious commodity…”As Krim describes, “Space is a precious commodity, and is expected to hold many answers to the future sustainability of earth.Yet, space is also a junkyard of old, non-functional satellite debris, broken down satellites…and this makes new explorations difficult at best. Just imagine if you had to drive to work everyday and had to navigate every few meters through trash and debris etc. and everyone was trying to do the same.”
Dr. Krim’s research in collaboration with the Czech Technical University in Prague will run from March 2015 until March 2018. The research is a push forward in trying to help clean up space of debris by imaging and tracking by radar and telescopes various satellites in orbit and by classifying, identifying and cataloguing all their information. The award is entitled “Fusion and Modeling Algorithums” because the project will combine or fuse optical data (from telescopes) and radar measurements.