Joining NJIT RockSat-X as Computer Science Lead

I’m excited to share that I’ve joined the NJIT RockSat-X Team as the Computer Science Lead.

Our team will be working on a deployable experimental payload designed to fly as part of NASA’s RockSat-X program. One of the main goals of the project is to develop a system capable of stabilizing itself after deployment using three reaction wheels, with one controlling each rotational axis.

As CS Lead, I’ll be leading the development of the software behind that system. This includes building the embedded stabilization and control software that will run during flight, integrating sensor data with the reaction wheel controllers, and developing the software needed to collect and process data from the experiment.

A major part of the project will also be building a simulation environment where we can test the stabilization system before running it on the actual hardware. The simulator will allow us to experiment with different physical configurations, environmental conditions, and control algorithms while sharing as much of the core control code as possible with the real flight system.

I’m really excited about this project because it brings together a lot of the areas of software engineering I enjoy most: C++, embedded systems, simulation, control systems, and working closely with hardware. It’s also an opportunity to build software where the behavior of the physical system directly depends on the code we write.

There’s a lot of work ahead, and I’m looking forward to sharing more updates as the project develops.