01-03-23
In January 2023, the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) is poised to launch into orbit a prototype, dubbed the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD), which will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth. [Caltech story]
Tags: APhMS EE GALCIT Harry Atwater Ali Hajimiri Sergio Pellegrino SSPP
10-26-22
Once considered science fiction, technology capable of collecting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth to provide a global supply of clean and affordable energy is moving closer to reality. Through the Space-based Solar Power Project (SSPP), a team of Caltech researchers is working to deploy a constellation of modular spacecraft that collect sunlight, transform it into electricity, then wirelessly transmit that electricity wherever it is needed—including to places that currently have no access to reliable power. "This is an extraordinary and unprecedented project," says Harry Atwater, Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; Director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance. "It exemplifies the boldness and ambition needed to address one of the most significant challenges of our time, providing clean and affordable energy to the world." [Caltech story]
Tags: APhMS EE research highlights MedE MCE Harry Atwater Ali Hajimiri Sergio Pellegrino
11-04-21
Graduate Student Michael Marshall, and Sergio Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist; Co-Director, Space-Based Solar Power Project, have won the 2021 AIAA Spacecraft Structures Best Paper Award from AIAA 2021 Scitech Forum. The title of the paper is “Reduced-Order Modeling for Flexible Spacecraft Deployment and Dynamics."
08-09-21
Sergio Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist; Co-Director, Space-Based Solar Power Project, has been awarded the Torroja Medal from the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS). The engraved medal represents the highest individual recognition given by the Association to members or nonmembers of the Association in recognition of outstanding and distinguished contributions to design, construction or research of shell and/or spatial structures. [Past recipients]
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino
09-28-16
Professor Sergio Pellegrino and colleagues including Professor Joel Burdick, are proposing a space observatory with a 100 meters diameter primary mirror. Their design calls for the use of more than 300 deployable truss modules that could be unfolded to form a scaffolding upon which a commensurate number of small mirror plates could be placed to create a large segmented mirror. In this concept, a spider-like, six-armed "hexbot" would assemble the trusswork and then crawl across the structure to build the mirror atop it. [Caltech story]
Tags: research highlights GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino Joel Burdick
06-01-16
Mechanical Engineering student Tyler Okamoto, mentored by Professor Sergio Pellegrino, is a recipient of the 2016 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. He is working with Professor Pellegrino’s team to build an autonomous reconfigurable space telescope using multiple nanosatellites that align in space to create a camera and mirror assembly. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Henry Ford II Scholar Award Sergio Pellegrino Tyler Okamoto
09-02-15
Professor Sergio Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Civil Engineering; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist, has been elected President of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS). The IASS, founded in 1959, aims to further progress through an interchange of ideas among all those interested in lightweight structural systems such as lattice, tension, membrane, and shell structures. [New Officers of IASS]
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino
02-23-11
Graduate student Xiaowei Deng and Sergio Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Civil Engineering, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist, have received the Best Paper award from the 11th AIAA Gossamer Systems Forum for their technical paper "Wrinkling of Orthotropic Viscoelastic Membranes." [Read the Paper]
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino
11-04-09
Sergio Pellegrino, Professor of Aeronautics and Civil Engineering and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist, has received the NASA Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award as a member of the superpressure balloon team. The award is for sound engineering and operational development, outstanding teamwork, and perseverance in building a new scientific balloon capability for NASA.
Tags: honors research highlights GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino
12-08-08
The paper "Mapping Two-Way Grids on to Free-Form Surfaces" by Sergio Pellegrino, Professor of Aeronautics and Civil Engineering, and co-authors Pete Winslow and Shrikant Sharma has been selected as the winner of the IASS Tsuboi Award in the category of the most outstanding paper in the Proceedings of the 2007 IASS Symposium. Pellegrino has also received a best paper recognition for "Computation of Partially Inflated Shapes of Stratospheric Balloon Structures" with co-author Xiaowei Deng. This work has has been selected as the best paper by the ASME Aerospace Structures and Materials Technical Committee. The award will be presented at the 50th AIAA SDSM conference.
Tags: honors MCE Sergio Pellegrino
