Joshua R. French, of Burrillville, Rhode Island, has been interested in space science all of his life. French, who is pursuing the astronomy option of the Bachelor of Science in physics degree, will graduate in May 2011. As a member of the University Honors Program, several research groups, and multiple performing ensembles as a trumpet player, he has kept a busy schedule but made time for his star sensor research that was funded by a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Joshua feels a great sense of accomplishment knowing that the star sensor he worked on flew in space. “There is a lot of pride with knowing that something you worked so hard on will be helping to solve real world problems,” he said. Consequently, this was a very fulfilling research experience. “I learned a great deal about the stresses of research life and how to continue fighting through the work even when things are not going the way you may have expected,” he said. He is confident that his experience will help him as he prepares to study aerospace engineering in graduate school.
Dr. Eberhard Möbius professor of physics and the department chair of physics, has served at the University of New Hampshire since 1990. When not teaching, he is an experimentalist, meaning that he is involved in designing, building and testing instrumentation used on spacecraft, and then analyzing the resulting data to “understand what is going on in space.” The American Geophysical Union recently honored him by naming him a Fellow.
Dr. Möbius was surprised by and proud of the amount of work that Joshua accomplished despite his busy schedule. “Joshua still managed to come back with new results, although he had his time filled to the max,” he said. Dr. Möbius has mentored many undergraduate students in the past, including George Clark and Morgan O’Neill, who provided the basis for Joshua’s research. He has found that it is important for students in the field of physics to learn to write for a broad audience. “As a scientist or engineer, we have to be able to communicate with the public,” he said. He also stressed the importance of collaboration on a project such as Joshua’s, saying, “We would not be able to function without extensive collaboration.”
Read Joshua R. French’s article Recalibrating the Star Sensor: From the IBEX Satellite to the RENU Rocket >>
