From the Editor-in-Chief - September 2014

In this issue we feature four interesting yet diverse articles related to Aerospace Systems Engineering. The first article describes a new control technique using a 3 Degrees of Freedom (3DOF) model to control a helicopter. The performance of this technique is shown to be superior to three classical control techniques. Next we have two manuscripts both dealing with the subject of sensor information. The first of these discusses techniques for capturing appropriate information from massive amounts of sensor data collected for safety and security and delves into the challenges of data fusion methodologies and impacts this may have on society. The third focuses on multiple sensor tracking architectures and describes one which performs optimally in terms of local track measurements. Our final technical article is one we take great pride in featuring on the cover of this issue to recognize our 2013 Pioneer Award Winners, Prof. Kam Lau and Mr. George Lutes. I think you will find the article very interesting as it describes their work on an ultra-stable fiber-optic system which was implemented and utilized for NASA???s Deep Space Network which in turn provides all of NASA???s interplanetary radio communications. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Lau and Mr. Lutes for their outstanding work which earned them the prestigious Pioneer Award.