• Siri Thejasaai V. P. (Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences (Coimbatore, India)
• Ipek Senturk (Yildiz Technical University (Turkey)
• Mathina Charoenwat (Thailand)

Mr. Sri Thejasaai V. P., a robotics and automation student from Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences (Coimbatore, India), spent two months as an intern at the Sharjah Academy of Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology as part of the IAESTE program. His interest in robotics led him to work on preprocessing images captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover. This included converting the color images to grayscale, cropping the images to a fixed size, and extracting important features using Principal Component Analysis. Such steps are crucial precursors to any machine learning or image analysis approach. Eng. Abdollah Masoud, a researcher at the academy, supervised his work.

Ms. Ipek Senturk, a diligent fourth-year Computer Engineering student from Yildiz Technical University, Turkey, has made remarkable strides during her internship at the Space Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) at SAASST. Upon joining SAIL, Ipek was introduced to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning fundamentals. She then was guided to work on object detection algorithms, where she skillfully implemented one of the most recent algorithms to conduct a comparative study to recognize meteorites. Her findings, focusing on the relationship between model sizes and their impact on accuracy, provided valuable insights, notably that large models are less effective for small datasets. Ipek was curious about data mining, making it a skill she expected to work on at SAASST.  She also worked on GAIA DR3 data to classify stars based on their color bands. This project enhanced her understanding of traditional machine learning techniques like Decision Trees and Support Vector Machines and broadened her astronomy knowledge. Reflecting on her time at SAIL, Ipek remarked, “This internship allowed me to have a hands-on experience which I can take back home.” Mrs. Aisha Al-Owais from SAIL was her direct supervisor.

Eng. Mathina Charoenwat, a Mechanical Engineering Graduate from Thammasat University, was hosted as an intern at the CubeSat Lab as a part of the IASTE student exchanges. Engs. Maryam Al-Ansaari and Nafisa Zian were the primary supervisors looking after Eng. Mathina’s work during her internship period at SAASST. Initially, she was familiarized with CubeSat Technology, focusing on the CubeSats from UAE. This was followed by training on the System Tool Kit (STK) to simulate satellite orbits. Orbit simulation for satellites with a camera payload was also covered. The intern also performed the structural design of a 6 U CubeSat. The second phase of the internship involved the intern in a Robotic Lunar Payload System Design and Research. The tasks completed by the intern for this project include a literature review on space-based robots, gripper mechanisms, and a 6 DOF robotic arm design, followed by 3D printing it at the CubeSat lab facilities.