3…2…1… We have liftoff! With the finalization of our Preliminary Design Review and the presentation with feedback from our peers, we are ready to demonstrate our progress thus far and begin the programming development. Our visit at MRSL is on the near horizon (and high priority in our Observation Space, one might say) and we are excited to tour their space. This week we also developed initial rule-based prototype modules for a series of components of the project. Lastly, we began studying the documentation for simulator development using Cesium.js. Our meeting with our MRSL liaisons also proved very useful with further clarification of short term goals and how to improve our current prototype version of the modules.

Looking forward, we will be heading down to Sarasota and celebrating MRSL’s Independence Week and presenting the PDR. We will also work on the development of current module programs so we can then complete a preliminary loop of our design using Clay Hoover’s provided code and to have something ready for November’s Prototype Inspection Day! We are excited for our next great leaps!

With a roadmap and a clearer system architecture, we are now performing final checks for launch! This week we have laid the groundwork for the project by finalizing our preliminary system architecture and defining specific inputs and outputs for each module under development. With these defined, we were able to ideate initial GitLab issues to “close the loop” and begin coding. With the developing Preliminary Design Review presentation and a structured understanding of what is desired from the Orbiteers, we are nearing readiness for development of the project. Our team has ironed out the details for our trip down to MRSL in a few weeks. Our meeting with MRSL this week further enlightened us on various of these topics and they have given us the go-ahead to start working on the project soon!

Looking forward, we are excited to practice our PDR presentation with our IPPD peers next week and applying all feedback from that to our official presentation two weeks from now! With coding issues under development, great things are soon to follow!

Building off of last week’s achievements, the Orbiteers are counting down to launch! With the project goals and limitations defined after our in-person meeting with MRSL, we were able to draft our system architecture including the various inputs and outputs for our different modules and the data schemas. We also developed an initial draft of our Preliminary Design Review (PDR) document based on our previously developed documentation. With instruction from our MRSL team, we also finished defining our virtual environments in our individual AWS EC2 instances and we ran a simple simulation to test out functionality. Our third liaison meeting this Thursday was useful for better defining some of our schemas and has enlightened us in the next steps.

Looking forward, we plan to implement a basic version of our system architecture to “close the loop” and then work on optimizing each module from there. Contact with the MRSL team will be critical in these first few steps since it will help in the confusing initial stages of development. We are excited to begin programming and we cannot wait to see where our travels to!

This week marked an exciting milestone for the Orbiteers: our first in-person meeting with our sponsor MRSL here at UF. It was a great opportunity to connect face-to-face, share ideas, and align on how the project will take shape over the coming months. We spent time exploring the project from a higher level, with its main components and connections outlined clearly. It was both productive and energizing to talk through everything in person.

Beyond the meeting itself, we also spent time identifying potential risks, outlining a project roadmap, and setting up tools to organize our work. Looking forward, our focus is on taking these early steps and steadily building them into tangible progress.

This week we held our first meeting with our liaison, where we introduced ourselves and began asking questions to better understand the path ahead. We also refined our project goals and laid some early groundwork for how we’ll approach the project as it grows in complexity. On the creative side, we gave our team logo a fresh update after receiving feedback from classmates.

Looking ahead, we’re eager to dive deeper into the challenges of the CAPS project. In the weeks to come, we expect plenty of discussion, reading, and teamwork as we build momentum, and we’re excited to learn from one another while taking on these opportunities together.

Hello, and welcome to Team 16’s first blog post! We are excited to start working with our sponsor MRSL and our coach Dr. Christian Grant on the Commercial Autonomous/AI Processing in Space (CAPS) project! Our team consists of many talented Computer Science and Computer Engineering majors, and the CAPS project will require us to develop cloud software and adaptive image processing algorithms that can process large amounts of data under time, space, and energy constraints.

We met as a team for the first time during the IPPD class period on Tuesday and started reviewing the scope of work for the CAPS project. We also met with our coach, Dr. Grant, for the first time on Thursday, in order to prepare for the first meeting with our liaison. This week, we were able to discuss the initial distribution of team responsibilities and came up with our team’s name (Orbiteers) and logo. The IPPD journey ahead is sure to be tough, but we are hoping to start strong and work efficiently to contribute as much as we can this year!

Meet the Team: