Morpheus Lab  
 
search





University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Aerospace Engineering alumna Grace Zimmerman (M.S. ’23) won first place in the 2023 Clark School Dean’s Research awards in the master’s category for her work exploring aeroassisted maneuvers for missions to the ice giants Neptune and Uranus.

Zimmerman, who graduated earlier this year with her M.S. from the department, is currently a part of the Astrodynamics and Control Systems Group at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. There she supports the Parker Solar Probe and New Horizons missions.

While at UMD, Grace was a part of Associate Professor Christine Hartzell's Planetary Surfaces and Spacecraft Laboratory and was also a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Zimmerman’s thesis, which contributed to her winning work for the Dean’s award explored aerogravity-assisted trajectories for aerocapture at the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus.

Neptune and Uranus are two candidates for an aerocapture maneuver in which a spacecraft is captured into a bound orbit through a single atmospheric pass, explained Zimmerman.

Another aeroassisted maneuver, the aerogravity-assist (AGA), uses an atmospheric pass to increase the turn angle around a planet, thus enabling large changes in a spacecraft’s heliocentric velocity. As both maneuvers require high arrival velocities and thermal protection system technologies, it may be beneficial to execute both maneuvers on a single mission.

To investigate the possible benefit of an AGA trajectory for setting up an aerocapture maneuver at the ice giants, Zimmerman developed a two-layer optimization approach to investigate the trajectory space. Trajectories are identified for both Uranus and Neptune that increase the number of feasible launches as compared to traditional gravity-assisted (GA) trajectories. In addition, her study identifies a new family of periodic high-altitude AGA trajectories to Uranus that are feasible using existing vehicle technologies.

Zimmerman received her B.S. in Physics at the University of Central Arkansas. She has also completed multiple internships with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Langley Research Center, where she worked on Uranus mission instrumentation, guidance and control for on-orbit robotics, and a guidance system for touch-and-go operations on small bodies.

She hopes to one day support a flagship mission to one of the ice giant planets.



Related Articles:
Garbulinski Receives USMSC GSG Outstanding Student Leader Award
From Composites to Competition: Grad Student Wins at Dance Championship
Morcos Recognized with Graduate School Outstanding GA Award
Three UMD Students Named Among Aviation Week Network’s Class of 2024 20 Twenties
Six Clark School Faculty Receive 2024 DURIP Awards
Alumna Rose Weinstein Receives NASA Early Career Achievement Medal
Department Welcomes New Faculty Member John Martin
Ashwani Gupta Named Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow
UMD's 40th Annual Convocation Honors Engineering Staff, Faculty
Colleen Murray Wins Award at Regional SAMPE Symposium

December 19, 2023


«Previous Story  

 

 

Current Headlines

Looking A“Head” to the Future of Autonomous Robots

UMD’s New ASTRA Center Announces Seed Grants

Madeline Fischer Wins 2024 European Rotorcraft Forum Padfield Award

Project Embraces Tribal History With Modern Technology

Department Welcomes New Faculty Member Tam Nguyen

UMD Student Receives Wings Foundation Scholarship

Maryland Engineers Take On Big Challenges in Medicine

Two Clark School Engineers Named Associate Fellows of Aeronautics and Astronautics Institute

Meet the A. James Clark Scholars Class of ’28

Aerospace Engineering Celebrates 75 Years

 
 
Back to top  
Home Clark School Home UMD Home aero umd NIA NASA