Project:	NEO Surveyor Mission Support
Disciplines:	Astronomy, Computer Science; Planetary Science
Mentor:	Joseph Masiero, Senior Scientist, (PMA), jmasiero@ipac.caltech.edu
Mentor URL:	https://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jmasiero/  (opens in new window)
Background:	Asteroids that come close to Earth's orbit present a potential hazard to our planet. IPAC at Caltech is developing the Survey Data System for NASA's NEO Surveyor mission, which has the goal of detecting and characterizing this population of objects. NEO Surveyor will launch in 2027; significant progress has been made to date on the development of the processing and analysis software, but much remains to be done to be ready for large amount of survey data that will soon arrive. We seek two students to assist with data system development.
Description:	The first project focuses on optimizing the compute infrastructure that will be used for data processing. We seek a student to design and build a multi-language (primarily in Rust) storage management system for managing the movement of data for NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission. The finished system will support the movement of data ingest, processing, and archive for the NEO Surveyor Survey Data Center. There will be multiple opportunities to contribute to open-source projects, primarily the Ceph project, along the way. The ideal applicant would be interested in the Linux kernel, cross-language interfaces (e.g., C in Rust or Rust in C), and/or distributed systems. The second project focuses on evaluating the efficiency of the moving object detection subsystem, and help to improve completeness and reliability while probing at the edges of the search parameter space. We seek a student to review the processing results for the simulated images and identify areas of the search algorithm that could be expanded to improve identification efficiency. The ideal applicant would be interested in time domain astronomical surveys, have experience with interpretation of telescopic data, and be fluent in Python. For both projects, the student will present their results to the broader team during the course of their work, and participate in writing up results for presentation/publication. When applying, please indicate which project you are interested in.
References:	https://neos.epss.ucla.edu/ https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023PSJ.....4..224M/abstract https://ceph.io/en/users/documentation/
Student Requirements:	Project 1: Linux file system experience Rust or C programming Project 2: Python programming Reduction and analysis of astronomical data
Programs:	This AO can be done under the following programs:   Program    Available To        SURF    both Caltech and non-Caltech students  Click on a program name for program info and application requirements.