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James Miller talks about his time as chief of navigation for the NEAR mission
Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2Z5utRP
Interview Summary
James Miller has decades of experience working on spacecraft navigation. He has also worked extensively in programming computer systems to conduct navigation operations. We spoke about his experiences as chief of navigation for the NEAR mission for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This is part 2 of a multi-part interview.
(THE AUDIO PLAYER IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.)
0:27 – Jim talks about how science experiments are proposed for unmanned missions.
2:32 – Jim talks about gravitational fields.
5:00 – Jim talks about the effect of gravity on missiles and spacecraft and gravity harmonics.
10:08 – Jim talks about how a mission used its science instruments to fix an orbit problem.
12:28 – Jim talks about what the NEAR mission did once they got into orbit around the asteroid.
18:00 – Jim talks about writing a paper on learning about the density of the asteroid Eros in the NEAR mission.
24:31 – Jim talks about his Icarus paper made his career.
25:38 – Jim talks about the point where his mission flat-lined temporarily. He goes into detail on approaching Eros.
30:43 – Jim talks about how they fixed a major problem with the NEAR mission.
35:57 – Jim talks about what the NEAR mission did after losing 50m/s in propulsion.
40:36 – Jim explains how they knew the NEAR mission had landed and not crashed on Eros.
41:35 – Jim explains why he was worried about the recent asteroid landing mission OSIRIS-REX. He talks about the software used for navigation.
54:26 – Jim talks about his early motivations to get into engineering work.
Links of interest
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319789156
Contact Information
For more “Technology and Space” please follow me at technologyandspace.com or www.spacewalksmoneytalks.com , on Facebook at Spacewalks Money Talks, on twitter at SpacewalksMT, on youtube at Spacewalks Money Talks , and on Apple Podcasts / Google Podcasts / Stitcher / Spotify Please see historyrabbithole.com for a list of my dozen or so blogs and podcasts. You’re sure to find something you like.
Guests: James Miller
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: space history, space technology, unmanned space missions, audio interviews, NASA history, podcast, coding and computing, general science,
Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2Z5utRP
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