Thomas听Rogers
Now works at:听Engineer II - Space Systems. Ball Aerospace
For my thesis project, I designed, built, and flew a soft x-ray spectrograph听on board a suborbital sounding rocket.听 The instrument, named the Off-plane听Grating Rocket for Extended Source Spectroscopy (OGRESS), was designed to听observe diffuse supernova remnants which are too large to observe effectively听with the Chandra and XMM-Newton telescopes.听 In addition to providing new听scientific measurements, the OGRESS mission carried out technology听development by utilizing Gaseous Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors.听 OGRESS听demonstrated the first successful space flight of GEM detectors, constituting听a major milestone for their use on future Explorer-Class missions.
OGRESS launched successfully on May 2, 2015.听 I am currently analyzing the听flight data, performing post-flight testing of the instrument, and preparing听my thesis.
Recent Publications:
Rogers, T., Schultz, T., McCoy, J., Miles, D., Tutt, J., McEntaffer, R.,听2015. 鈥淔irst results from the OGRESS sounding rocket payload鈥, Proc.听SPIE, 9601
McCoy, J., Schultz, T., Tutt, J., Miles, D., Rogers, T., McEntaffer, R.,听2015. 鈥淎 primer for telemetry interfacing in accordance with NASA standards听using low cost FPGAs鈥, SPIE, 9601
Rogers, T., McEntaffer, R., Schultz, T., Zeiger, B., Oakley, P., Cash, W.,听2013. 鈥淭he OGRESS sounding rocket payload鈥, SPIE, 8859