Rhea Senthil Kumar
Integration Testing for the General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) Experiment
GAPS is an Antarctic balloon mission that will search for low-energy (< 0.25 GeV/n) cosmic-ray antinuclei. The summer project will consist of various calibration, integration, and thermal vacuum chamber tests (TVac) for submodules of the GAPS payload. TVac tests will primarily take place at the NTS test lab in Los Angeles. I will also be responsible for other subtasks related to the development process, such as developing UIs for ground testing, backend software, assembling/testing backend data acquisition boxes, and various gondola I&T tasks.
Message To Sponsor
Thank you for the opportunity to continue my research with this exciting project this summer! To me, this project has opened my eyes to what the developmental process for science satellites look like, and I'm very excited to be a part of the process.
Major: Astrophysics, Computer Science
Mentor: Andreas Zoglauer / Space Sciences Laboratory
Sponsor: Anselm MPS Fund