Vladimir Ivanov is currently a sophomore at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, majoring in computer science. Since an early age, computers and astronomy have been his two passions. In the summer of 2006, he was lucky enough to receive the opportunity to combine them into a project for W.M. Keck Observatory, which increased his interest toward both fields. After graduating from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, he plans to pursue a doctoral degree. In his spare time he enjoys playing soccer as well as other sports like biking, jogging and swimming.
Home Island: Big Island
High School:
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Hilo
Project Site: Oceanit
Mentor: Frank Dachille
There are more than eleven thousand bodies (rockets, satellites, and debris) that are orbiting the Earth. Space surveillance is important for preventing collisions and other potential problems. Oceanit, an aerospace engineering company, is developing a product called HANDS (High Accuracy Network Determination System) which will use low-cost optical ground stations to keep track of objects orbiting the Earth. The goal of this project was to create an application that would provide visual information on the satellites and their positions in real time. The programming language C# was used in order to complete the task. An improvement providing high accuracy was developed by incorporating constant streams of satellite orbit data. Visual images of the objects’ orbits are more familiar to the end user, and they transform streams of numbers into meaningful data. The finished product will integrate graphical visualization into one or more of the HANDS projects.