MAE professor Jacob Chung was awarded an Exceptional Public Service Medal from NASA last month. The award is among the highest honors bestowed by the NASA Glenn Research Center Awards Office and is “an acknowledgement of significant contributions to NASA’s mission and purpose,” according to the award letter. The citation specified that Chung earned the award with “exceptional, sustained, and multi-faceted contributions advancing NASA’s in-space cryogenic fluid management science and technologies over multiple programs and 30 years.” He will be recognized for this achievement at a ceremony on June 25.
Chung’s work is primarily centered on in-space thermal-fluid management of traditional chemical rocket propulsion systems. He and his lab have been conducting research for NASA on space thermal-fluid management technologies since 1992. Over the course of the past 32 years, his contributions to NASA’s efforts have mainly fallen under three particular areas. The first area is drop tower experimentation and modeling and numerical simulation on microgravity pool boiling, the second is cryogenic transfer line chilldown, cryogenic propellant storage tank chilldown and fill, and propellant storage tank boiloff and tank helium subsurface pressurization in terrestrial and microgravity conditions, and the third is cryogenic Liquid Acquisition Device (LAD) screen channel experimentation, modeling, and numerical simulation.
Long-term in-space cryogenic thermal-fluid management (which includes propellant transfer line chilldown, storage tank chilldown, boiloff in storage tank, tank thermodynamic conditioning, propellant liquid acquisition, and other elements) is critical to human exploration of the moon, Mars, and potentially asteroids. NASA sees this exploration as a major focus going forward, therefore the effective, sufficient, and reliable supply of cryogenic propellants (requiring adequate storage and efficient transfer of cryogenic propellant fluids) is crucial.
“All the accomplishments would not have been possible without the hard work of the former students in my lab,” Chung said, naming in particular Trevor Snyder, Jeff Sitter, Yue Ma, Rick Moehrle, Kun Yuan, Hong Hu, Sam Darr, Chase Camarotti, Jun Dong, Hao Wang, and Bo Han Huang.
Chung came to the United States from Taiwan in 1971, with nothing but one suitcase and $1,000. Over the decades, he raised a family with two sons (both of which now have successful careers as a physician and an engineer) and eventually rose to become a distinguished professor at UF. He has been here since 1998, before which he had spent 19 years on the faculty of Washington State University after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
“In a nutshell, I have achieved my American Dream,” he said. “As an immigrant, I have been telling myself that I need to pay back to my adopted country. With this award, I feel that I have done my share of making contributions towards NASA’s mission and purpose, and also my patriotic work has been recognized.”