Colorado School of Mines¶
Type: Academia | Location: Golden, CO | SST projects: 1
SST Portfolio¶
| Project | Title | Period | TRL | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95553 | Move to Talk, Talk to Move: Swarm Comms + Controls | 2018-03 → 2022-04 | 2→4 | Completed | no-visible-outcome |
What Was Developed¶
Integrated communication and controls framework for self-organizing spacecraft swarms. A software framework that tightly couples communication protocols with orbital control for distributed small spacecraft monitoring time-varying or geographically distributed phenomena.
Mission concept: carrier spacecraft + swarm of small spacecraft orbiting a near-Earth asteroid. Carrier handles deep space network relay; swarm members collaborate autonomously.
Key deliverables: - 42-NS3 integration: High-fidelity simulation platform combining orbital dynamics (42) with network simulation (NS3) - Open-source code released - Project website maintained
JPL collaboration (co-organization).
Key People¶
Qi Han — PI¶
Computer Science professor at Colorado School of Mines. Research focus: pervasive computing, mobile sensing, IoT, networked robotic systems. Not an aerospace engineer — a CS/networking researcher applying distributed systems concepts to spacecraft swarms.
- TechPort footprint: 1 project (this one). No other NASA projects.
- Background in distributed computing, not space systems.
Upstream Lineage¶
No TechPort upstream. No Advanced_From outcome record.
Downstream Impact¶
No Visible Downstream Outcome¶
- No follow-on TechPort projects
- No flight demonstration
- No commercial product
- Open-source code and simulation tools were released but no evidence of adoption by NASA flight missions
Relationship to SST Swarm Thread¶
SST has a decade-long swarm technology arc (see Comms topic): - EDSN [10941] → Nodes [91369] → V-R3x [106824] → Starling [106822] → Starling 1.5 [155355]
Move to Talk sits adjacent to this arc (same era as V-R3x) but was a university simulation/algorithm project, not a flight mission. No evidence the 42-NS3 framework was used by Starling or other flight swarms.
Publications¶
No NTRS citations found. Publications likely in IEEE/ACM venues for distributed systems.
Assessment¶
Outcome category: no-visible-outcome
Pattern: "Discipline Crossover" — a CS/networking researcher applying distributed systems concepts to spacecraft swarms. Interesting intellectual contribution (tight comms+controls coupling) but no path to flight without a hardware partner.
Distinctive: The open-source 42-NS3 simulation platform is a potentially useful community tool, but there's no evidence of uptake. The asteroid swarm mission concept is ambitious but remained at TRL 4.
Last updated: 2026-04-14 (session 20)