Current Activities
Serving the Experimental Scientist Since 2001.
Serving the Experimental Scientist Since 2001.
Six Degrees of Freedom provides engineering design, construction, instrument development and integration, experiment solutions and consulting that support your project goals and help improve the quality of your scientific results.
A major upgrade of the airglow imaging capabilities is undertaken by 6DOF. The imaging system consists of two cooled CCD imagers from KEO Scientific. The all-sky imager cycles through three 2nm wide wavelength bands and the nFOV imager is currently imaging 6300Å. The data which is collected autonomously every night is made public in near real-time.
Six Degrees of Freedom’s mission is to provide value and quality solutions for the experimental scientist.
While working many years with scientists, engineers and technicians developing and deploying remote sensing and in-situ scientific instrumentation we saw the need of improving the transformation of great ideas into practical solutions. Six Degrees of Freedom meet this need by combining technical and scientific experience with a deep appreciation for the people and resources in the field.
North of the Arctic circle in Sweden is a small mining town called Kiruna. During the late nineties the region experienced one of the coldest winters in memory with temperatures reaching below -45°C. At that time, at the college of aerospace engineering at the institute of space physics, the seed for Six Degrees of Freedom was planted.
Six degrees of freedom traditionally refers to the ability of a rigid body to move in 3D space along each of the three axes independently and independent of rotation.
For us the expression symbolizes the ability to move freely on different paths while aiming for one goal. Coincidentally the founders now have earned a total of six engineering degrees and have traveled the world working with remote sensing and in-situ scientific instrumentation for a number of universities and institutions.
We are incubated by eSpace, The Center for Space Entrepreneur-ship. eSpace is a not-for-profit organization formed from a partnership of the University of Colorado, a national leader in aerospace engineering, and Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems Group.
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. Thomas A. Edison
Founder and Lead Engineer
MSc. Aerospace Engineering CU Boulder
MSc. Space Technology Umea University/IRF Sweden
Sgt. Royal Swedish Army
Co-founder and Radar Engineer
MSc. Aerospace Engineering CU Boulder
MSc. Space Technology/Earth science Umea University/IRF Sweden
Six degrees of freedom is a service oriented business focusing on the needs of the experimental scientist in the quest for new scientific findings. Whether you are in the very beginning of preparing a proposal or in the middle of development or even running observational campaigns, six degrees of freedom offers the support you need to succeed.
The SwRI ion/electron acceleration facility is used for satellite instrumentation calibration and tests. It is featured in this article and is considered one of the best in the world. Paloma worked with the software team developing the extremely safety critical user interface. Johannes built the relay based, switch activated, interlocked control panel working in parallel with the computer interface.
A custom designed containerized laboratory was developed in collaboration with CU Boulder scientists to facilitate the next generation lidar instrument for atmospheric research. The lab is equipped with a motor controlled sliding roof capable of exposing three large telescopes to the sky. An innovative design was developed to house the telescopes and at the same time adhere to physical standards set by the seatainer shipping rules. The lab is currently deployed in Boulder, CO but awaits deployment to Antarctica as well as near equator sites.
A magnetometer system was deployed at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The instrument is part of the MEASURE magnetometer array which is part of a large network of ground based magnetometers called ULTIMA: Ultra Large Terrestrial Magnetometer Array. The purpose of the magnetometer is to time and determine coordinates of various ionospheric dynamics triggered by substorms.
Photo courtesy UCLA
Two airglow imager systems were tested integrated deployed and automated at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The systems collects data nightly and pipes the images to a server at Penn State University. IDL data processing code was also developed for calibration and other data summary applications. The data is made public via the website: http://allsky.ee.psu.edu
Data acqusition (DAQ) software was developed for an experimental lidar receiver. The software was developed in LabVIEW and after successful lab tests the DAQ system was integrated with the Colorado State University Sodium lidar system in Fort Collins. The photon counting system has provided data for several recent publications and is now also used in the NOAA lidar labs.
Laboratory planning was conducted for a CU Boulder lidar group to facilitate both existing and soon to be acquired equipment for a lidar campaign at McMurdo, Antarctica. The large complex lidar instrument needed to be housed in one of the lab spaces with few options for modification. Thermal and field-of-view considerations were critical as well as operator access to optical components. To obtain a good understanding of the possible deployment issues a 3D model was produced from both 2D site plans and lidar component dimensions.
