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Student Award

Congratulations to Alexander Wong on being awarded a Massachusetts Space Grant Fellowship for Summer 2026.

ConferenceStudent Award

LSPE will have three presentations at the 2026 International Planetary Probe Workshop. Congratulations to Oleksii Padun, Ben Peters, and Estefania Contreras-Rivas for receiving IPPW Student Scholar recognition.

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LSPE will have three presentations at the 23rd International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW), held in Washington, DC, June 22-26, 2026. Congratulations to Oleksii Padun, Ben Peters, and Estefania Contreras-Rivas for receiving IPPW Student Scholar recognition.

  • Oleksii Padun, Maxwell Jacobson, Dan Pearson, and Ye Lu, “Pathfinder Fly-ahead Entry Probe for Aerocapture: Feasibility Quantification,” 23rd International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW), Washington, DC, June 22-26, 2026.
  • Ben Peters, Estefania Contreras-Rivas, Jacob Donovan, Alexander Wong, Brady Fox, Deanna Polosino, Mukundan Srivatsa, Sean Okamoto, and Ye Lu, “Mission Design Of Neptune Aerobraking Combined with Triton Moon Tours,” 23rd International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW), Washington, DC, June 22-26, 2026.
  • Estefania Contreras-Rivas, Alexander Wong, Brady Fox, Ben Peters, Deanna Polosino, Jacob Donovan, Mukundan Srivatsa, Sean Okamoto, and Ye Lu, “Thermoelectric Power Generation During Hypersonic Flythrough,” 23rd International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW), Washington, DC, June 22-26, 2026.
Conference

Maxwell Jacobson presented a paper at the 2026 IEEE Aerospace Conference on expanding Venus entry accessibility through resonant transfer.

Student Award

Oleksii Padun received first place in the Engineering Category at the WPI Graduate Research & Innovation Exchange.

Conference

Oleksii Padun presented two papers at the 2026 AIAA SciTech Forum on atmospheric re-entry state and parameter estimation and spacecraft mass-moment parameter estimation.

Funding

LSPE received new funding from the Emil Buehler Perpetual Trust to advance navigation techniques for hypersonic vehicles and re-entry applications.

Student Award

Congratulations to Maxwell Jacobson on being awarded a Massachusetts Space Grant Fellowship for Summer 2025.

People

Alex Hakobyan joined LSPE as a Ph.D. student beginning Fall 2025.

Funding

LSPE received new funding from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a rapid mission architecture tool for planetary science missions.

Funding

LSPE received NSF funding for a workshop on open and integrated network testbeds for research and translation in collaboration with WPI ECE faculty.

Student Award

Oleksii Padun received a student travel award to present work on estimation and control of dynamic mass and moment for a spacecraft attitude simulator at the Small Satellite Conference.

Student Award

Isaac Garry received an IPPW student scholarship to present work on parametric and trade analysis of aerobraking mission design, and also received a summer research opportunity from Massachusetts Space Grant.

People

Ye Lu joined the Aerospace Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.