Brian Gunter

Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering Georgia Tech College of Engineering

  • Atlanta GA

Brian Gunter's research activities involve various aspects of spacecraft missions and their applications.

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Georgia Tech College of Engineering

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Biography

Dr. Gunter is an associate professor in aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rice University, and later his M.S. and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in orbital mechanics. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Gunter was on the faculty of the Delft University of Technology (TU-Delft) in the Netherlands, as a member of the Physical and Space Geodesy section. His research activities involve various aspects of spacecraft missions and their applications, such as investigations into current and future laser altimetry missions, monitoring changes in the polar ice sheets using satellite data, applications of satellite constellations/formations, and topics surrounding kinematic orbit determination. He has been responsible for both undergraduate and graduate courses on topics such as satellite orbit determination, Earth and planetary observation, scientific applications of GPS, and space systems design. He is currently a member of the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical Committee, and also serves as the Geodesy chair for the Fall AGU Meeting Program Committee. He has received a NASA group achievement award for his work on the GRACE mission, and he is also a former recipient of a NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship. He is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the International Association of Geodesy (IAG).

Areas of Expertise

Flight Mechanics and Control
Systems Design and Optimization

Selected Accomplishments

Visiting Research Fellow, Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK

2011

NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship

2002-2004

Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Graduate Fellowship

2000-2003

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Education

The University of Texas at Austin

Ph.D.

Aerospace Engineering

2004

The University of Texas at Austin

M.S.

Aerospace Engineering

2000

Rice University

B.S.

Mechanical Engineering

1994

Selected Media Appearances

Georgia Tech signs $1.2M deal with Xenesis for satellite optical communications

LaserFocusWorld  online

2018-07-10

“We expect to significantly add to the total bandwidth of information that we can get down from space, and the more bandwidth we have, the more information we can exchange and the more value we can get from satellite networks,” says Brian Gunter, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, who will be leading the project.

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Laser-Based System Could Expand Space-to-Ground Communication

Georgia Tech News Center  online

2018-06-25

“We expect to significantly add to the total bandwidth of information that we can get down from space, and the more bandwidth we have, the more information we can exchange and the more value we can get from satellite networks,” said Brian Gunter, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering who will be leading the project.

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The Future is Small

Georgia Tech Research Horizons  online

2015-12-02

“Some of the experiments we want to do with the mission, such as the inter-satellite laser ranging, haven’t been done with CubeSats before, so this presents some engineering challenges,” said Brian Gunter, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering who is the principal investigator for the project. “We’re asking these small satellites to do a number of complex tasks, so the details can get complicated, and there are a lot of things we have to get right.”

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Selected Articles

Simulated Formation Flight of Nanosatellites Using Differential Drag with High-Fidelity Rarefied Aerodynamics

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

Daniel S. Groesbeck, Kenneth A. Hart and Brian C. Gunter

2019

The control and utilization of small-satellite constellations and formations are particularly challenging due to the resource constraints involved for nanosatellites. One example of this is the Ranging and Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment (RANGE) mission [1]. This two-satellite CubeSat mission consists of two 1.5 U (1U 10× 10× 10 cm) satellites in a leader–follower formation (see Fig. 1), with the goal of improving the absolute and relative positioning capabilities of CubeSats. The satellites have no onboard propulsion system, and they will rely on differential drag techniques to control their relative position. Each satellite will receive Global Positioning System (GPS) telemetry data and will communicate with the Georgia Tech (GT) ground station via Ultra High Frequency (UHF) transmitters.

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Separating Geophysical Signals Using GRACE and High‐Resolution Data: A Case Study in Antarctica

Geophysical Research Letters

Olga Engels, Brian Gunter, Riccardo Riva, Roland Klees

2018

To fully exploit data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), we separate geophysical signals observed by GRACE in Antarctica by deriving high‐spatial resolution maps for present‐day glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) and ice‐mass changes with the least possible noise level. For this, we simultaneously (i) improve the postprocessing of gravity data and (ii) consistently combine them with high‐resolution data from Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite altimeter (ICESat) and Regional Atmospheric Climate Model 2.3 (RACMO). We use GPS observations to discriminate between various candidate spatial patterns of vertical motions caused by GIA. The ICESat‐RACMO combination determines the spatial resolution of estimated ice‐mass changes. The results suggest the capability of the developed approach to retrieve the complex spatial pattern of present‐day GIA, such as a pronounced subsidence in the proximity of the Kamb Ice Stream and pronounced uplift in the Amundsen Sea Sector.

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Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017

Nature

Brain Gunter et al.

2018

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Here we combine satellite observations of its changing volume, flow and gravitational attraction with modelling of its surface mass balance to show that it lost 2,720 ± 1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, which corresponds to an increase in mean sea level of 7.6 ± 3.9 millimetres (errors are one standard deviation). Over this period, ocean-driven melting has caused rates of ice loss from West Antarctica to increase from 53 ± 29 billion to 159 ± 26 billion tonnes per year; ice-shelf collapse has increased the rate of ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula from 7 ± 13 billion to 33 ± 16 billion tonnes per year. We find large variations in and among model estimates of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment for East Antarctica, with its average rate of mass gain over the period 1992–2017 (5 ± 46 billion tonnes per year) being the least certain.

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