Tudat

Time for another update. Since my last update, lots of has happened. After a winter break on the East Coast, I got my nose back to the grindstone at the start of the new year. I’ve managed to make plenty of progress since then. I’ve spent a lot of time working on the software project Tudat (TU Delft Astrodynamics Toolbox), being run within the Astrodynamics & Space missions research group in Delft. Particularly, I’ve spent time working towards the latest internal release of the software library. The release took place on the 18th of February, 2011, and was marked by a presentation delivered by yours truly. Compared to the first release, this one went off a lot smoother, so from a management perspective, it was good to see that we had actually learned our lessons, particularly with regards to time management and planning. I spent three weeks in Delft, as consolidating the work done by the working group for the second release was deemed to be much easier in person. As I am writing this update, I am at Schiphol airport, heading back to Berkeley.

The second release of Tudat includes a lot of great features. I’ve managed to add a number of features that will be of direct use for simulations I have planned to conduct for my own PhD research. The idea is that I will have my first simulations completed within the next few weeks.

As a part of my involvement in Tudat, I have been supervising an MSc student. This has been a good experience, and I have realised that I quite like the teaching aspect. It has also been a good experience to have a student conduct research using Tudat. It has helped clarify many things about the setup of Tudat, hopefully making it easier for MSc students to make use of the software library in future.

More news will follow in the coming weeks regarding my own PhD research.