University of Rhode Island engineering professor Sungho Kim received a $1.2 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to craft a microchip for telescope technology with a team of graduate students.
The NASA grant is being utilized to research a way to take current sensor technology and shrink it down to a 4 millimeter by 4 millimeter microchip, which can fit in a telescope, Kim said. The grant covers three years of research which began in January of this year, according to Kim.
NASA is developing three different telescopes specific for each range of infrared light. This is something no telescope has been able to do yet, Kim said.
“There is no telescope that can see far-infrared signals,” Kim said. “You cannot see all the stars, this is why NASA is developing a special type of space telescope specific for optimizing the far infrared signal.”
The microchip will allow for NASA telescopes to detect all three of the different ranges of infrared light, near-infrared, mid-infrared and far-infrared, according to Kim. Implementing technology that can detect far-infrared is the biggest aspect, however.
“The importance of far infrared rays is that the origin of the universe is generating far infrared signal light,” Kim said.
The idea sparked roughly one year ago after Kim’s fellow colleagues, who are engineers at NASA, gave a detailed explanation on a microchip, Kim said. It was this conversation that sparked work towards development of a block diagram for the current microchip.
“I started to scratch a brainstorm on what kind of electronics would be best for this sensor,” Kim said. “We sat down together and we talked about the design requirement and how we would develop this system and how much money we would need.”
The specialized semiconductor microchip Kim designed also referenced current conventional systems, compacting them while simultaneously utilizing just a fraction of their power, Kim said. The existing system that Kim referenced is known as the “readout system.”
“This full system of existing electronics converts data into imaging,” Kim said. “It’s maybe 10 times bigger than a laptop and so it’s too large, too bulky and is consuming too much power.”
The proposal to develop this small, low power electronic system in the form of a microchip was sent to NASA, which is working on developing a space telescope specific for optimizing the infrared signal, according to Kim.
When the proposal was accepted by NASA, fund money was used to hire students which would help with the research side of the project, Kim said.
Doctorate student Prinsca Kusorbor, Frank Danso, a master’s student from Ghana, Joseph Diaa a senior undergraduate from URI and Youn Seo, a master’s student from South Korea have been working with Kim since January.
Seo has been working with Kim on another big project from the United States Navy, which regards a Fast Fourier Transform accelerator, Kim said.
Fast Fourier Transform stands for a technique used to convert time into frequency.
The FFT accelerator grant was officially presented by the Office of Naval Research in February. It is just shy of $1 million and is set to span for three years, according to Kim’s bio on the URI website.
Kim is also putting a fair amount of the grant money towards financial support for students. This includes full tuition, a monthly payment salary, housing insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance and a student fee, Kim said.
Every week, students submit a weekly report to track progress and express any challenges within the research, Kim said. This progress will later be sent to agents in a larger report every six months.
The three-year grant will be used to make the microchip’s first prototype, which will then be updated until it meets the requirements for the NASA telescope.
“I cannot say I can make this tiny chip qualified for NASA within three years, that’s impossible,” Kim said. “I will continue this project until I have a system qualified for NASA which will take approximately 10 years.”
Remaining committed to big projects is something Professors are obligated to do, according to Kim.
“Professors have two roles, one of them is teaching and the other is researching,” Kim said.
For Kim this research regards technology, which has potential to enable NASA to develop a telescope that studies the origins of the universe, he said.