Jeanine Hunter

Lecturer & Academic Advisor

Email: jeanine.hunter@sjsu.edu
Phone:
Office: Engr 272F

Education

M.S. Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering, Stanford University, 1981.
B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, Purdue University, 1979.

Bio

Jeanine Hunter has professional experience with spacecraft, aircraft and rotorcraft.

In 1976 she joined NASA Johnson Space Center as a Space Shuttle crew systems intern before the first Shuttle launch in 1981. To train Shuttle astronauts for the unusually steep re-entry glidepath, she developed software for the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA), a modified Grumman Gulfstream II. Test Drive: Shuttle Training Aircraft Preps Astronauts for Landing

At NASA Ames, she researched and tested V/STOL autopilot and head-up display concepts. For the motion-based simulation effort she derived the ten degree-of-freedom nonlinear equations of motion of a helicopter carrying an externally suspended load (e.g., fire retardant).

At TRW, she carried out analysis of aerospace vehicle flight test results using system identification algorithms and Kalman filter trajectory reconstruction techniques. In 1988, she became lead of the Guidance, Navigation and Control Section.

In 1989 she joined the newly formed SJSU Aerospace Engineering Department. She developed and taught classes in dynamics, control, design and experimental methods. In 1994, the students in her spacecraft design class led the development and construction of Spartnik, an uncontrolled octagonal nanosatellite whose payloads were a gamma ray detector and a digital camera. Her graduate students built and tested a VHF antenna located on the roof of the engineering building and demonstrated the estimation of spacecraft orbital elements from Doppler recovered from the downlink signal.

In 2014, she introduced an undergraduate course in vector-based dynamics (AE138) based on the ground-breaking work of Dr. Thomas Kane of Stanford University. She is part of a vector dynamics working group including Dr. Paul Mitiguy (Stanford University) and Dr. Burford Furman (SJSU Mechanical Engineering). The working group’s objective is to encourage and enable much-needed improvements in dynamics education for all engineering students.

Dr. Thomas Kane:

Dr. Mitiguy’s webpage:

MotionGenesis

Using vector-based particle dynamics she developed undergraduate and graduate courses in astrodynamics. In a field that often uses a collection of scalar equations, the vector approach provides clarity and give students confidence in their ability to derive equations of motion.

She is also a private pilot.

Classes Taught

AE110 Space Systems Engineering
AE112 Aerospace Structures I: Statics and Strength of Materials
AE114 Aerospace Structures II
AE120 Experimental Methods
AE138 Vector-based Dynamics
AE140 Rigid Body Dynamics
AE142 Astrodynamics
AE149 Advanced Dynamics and Simulation
AE165 Flight Mechanics
AE168 Dynamics and Control of Aerospace Vehicles
AE172 Spacecraft Design
AE242 Orbital Mechanics and Mission Design
AE243 Advanced Astrodynamics
AE246 Advanced Aircraft Dynamics and Control
ME101 Dynamics

Research Interests

Prof. Hunter is part of a team developing an Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning (AIML) lab for the AE department. Candidate applications are obstacle avoidance for aircraft navigation and autonomous interplanetary spacecraft navigation.