engineering

Timothy Canham

Timothy Canham is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Timothy Canham rather than just read about it. In short: Timothy Canham is an American software engineer. He works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he is the operations lead and former software lead for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity.

Key takeaways

Timothy Canham belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Timothy Canham to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Timothy Canham from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Timothy Canham is an American software engineer. He works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he is the operations lead and former software lead for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity. He resides in Santa Clarita, California.

Education Canham attended Marcus Whitman High School in Rushville, New York and Clarkson University, where he graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering.

Career Upon graduating from Clarkson University, Canham applied for a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has worked there ever since with the exception of one year off in the 1990s. Prior to his work on Ingenuity, Canham developed software that resulted in the successful landing of Curiosity. He is an architect of the Fprime flight software framework, used in many JPL projects including Ingenuity. Canham started working on the Ingenuity project in the summer of 2015, building a prototype of the helicopter to "test the basics" with a team of up to 20 people. The helicopter was selected to be taken on the Perseverance rover to Mars in 2017. In a February 2021 interview with IEEE, Canham revealed that the helicopter would be using a Linux operating system with open-source code and a Snapdragon 801 processor board and 500-hertz guidance loops. The Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity, landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 as part of the Mars 2020 mission; on April 19 of that year, Ingenuity completed the first ever powered, controlled extraterrestrial flight of an aircraft, which lasted 39.1 seconds. In addition to developing and operating spacecraft, Canham has participated in outreach activities at universities to assist students. The Ingenuity team, which includes Canham, earned the 2021 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the Space Foundation. In 2022, the team was awarded the Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association "for the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet, thereby opening the skies of Mars and other worlds for future scientific discovery and exploration."

Scientific publications Dan Dvorak, Greg Bollella, Timothy Canham, et al. Project Golden Gate: towards real-time Java in space missions. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. May 24, 2004. Retrieved May 28, 2022. David Henriquez, Timothy Canham, Johnny Chang, and Elihu McMahon. Workstation-Based Avionics Simulator to Support Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software Development. June 15, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2022. Garth Watney, Leonard J. Reder, and Timothy Canham. Modeling for Partitioned and Multi-core Flight Software Systems: (Instrument Software Framework). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. December 11, 2014. Retrieved May 27, 2022. Bob Balaram, Timothy Canham, Courtney Duncan, Håvard F. Grip, Wayne Johnson, Justin Maki, Amelia Quon, Ryan Stern and David Zhu. Mars Helicopter Technology Demonstrator. Aerospace Research Central. January 7, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2022. Robert Bocchino, Timothy Canham, Garth Watney, Leonard Reder, and Jeffrey Levison. F Prime: An Open-Source Framework for Small-Scale Flight Software Systems. Utah State University. July 19, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2022. Canham, Timothy. Mars Helicopter: Leveraging Commercial Hardware and Open Source Software. 2019. Retrieved May 27, 2022.

Lectures Farah Alibay and Timothy Canham. Helicopters in Space (live public talk). Jet Propulsion Laboratory. March 11, 2021. Retrieved May 27, 2022.

See also MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager Bob Balaram, Ingenuity chief engineer Håvard Fjær Grip, Ingenuity chief pilot

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Timothy Canham

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Timothy Canham claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Timothy Canham before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Timothy Canham ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Timothy Canham

In research: Timothy Canham appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Timothy Canham in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Timothy Canham is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American engineers, American software engineers, Clarkson University alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Timothy Canham outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Timothy Canham in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Timothy Canham means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Timothy Canham out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Timothy Canham in simple terms?

Timothy Canham is an American software engineer. He works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he is the operations lead and former software lead for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity.

Why does Timothy Canham matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Timothy Canham?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Timothy Canham.