Engineering & Technology

Images From the James Webb Space Telescope

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Images From the James Webb Space Telescope Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2022 - 00:00

Much of the world was awestruck when NASA published the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope.

Erica Nelson, �� Boulder astrophysical and planetary sciences assistant professor, is part of several programs that are spending more than 1,000 hours on the telescope, including about 700 on its main infrared camera. “We are seeing galaxies which formed at much earlier times than we previously thought possible that may pose a threat to what we thought we understood about the universe on the grandest scales,” she said.

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Photo by Space Telescope Science Institute

Much of the world was awestruck when NASA published the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope.

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Breath of Fresh Air

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Breath of Fresh Air Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

Daniel Oberhaus

Jessica Gilman takes to the skies to understand how unprecedented wildfires and the global pandemic are changing the climate and affecting our health.

When Colorado went on lockdown last March, Jessica Gilman (PhDChem’06) was in her lab analyzing air samples from wildfire plumes. Gilman had spent the previous summer in a plane, dive bombing into wildfire smoke to understand its chemistry and how it can affect human health.

Gilman, a research chemist at Boulder’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), put the work on hold when the organization ordered all its scientists to quarantine at home indefinitely. But as the shock of the situation wore off, Gilman realized the global pandemic had created an unprecedented scientific opportunity to study the atmosphere, climate change and human health when there were hardly any cars on the road or planes in the air. It was a situation that only a few months earlier would have been entirely unimaginable.

“It was this big national experiment that nobody anticipated or wanted,” Gilman said. “You have to try to take advantage of these really terrible situations for future benefit.”

Gilman’s expertise is in volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, a gaseous class of molecules released by everything from forest fires and car engines to hairspray and freshly cut grass.

“Nearly every decision we make involves VOCs,” Gilman said. “They really are just surrounding us on a daily basis.”

Some VOCs, like benzene and the particulates produced by wildfires, are directly harmful to human health. But all VOCs, including oil-based and naturally occurring compounds in deodorants, cleaning products and fragrances, react with sunlight and gases from cars and other combustion engines in the atmosphere to create ozone and particulate matter, the main ingredients in smog.

The pandemic created an environment that was almost like taking a time machine to the future. Chemically speaking, taking all the gas guzzlers off the road is comparable to replacing them with electric vehicles. This would trigger a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas and smog-forming emissions from combustion engines, which is a critical element in mitigating climate change and improving air quality. But at the same time, people’s consumption habits were changing as they sheltered at home. They were using more hand sanitizer and cleaning products, for example, which produce a lot of VOCs.

In the atmosphere, vehicular emissions interact with VOCs in complex and often surprising ways, and Gilman wanted to understand how this dramatic shift in human behavior affected atmospheric chemistry.

“You have this different mix of VOCs,” said Gilman, who lives in Boulder. “We don’t know yet how that affects ozone or particle formation differently than a more traditional mix.”

It may be hard to believe that hand sanitizer and other common products like paints or perfumes could be a significant variable in climate change and public health, but it’s even harder to argue with the data. Car engines were once the dominant source of VOCs, but according to Gilman’s research, a number of regulation changes and technological advances over the past few decades has lowered vehicular VOC emissions significantly.

In 2018, Gilman and her colleagues discovered that consumer products like hairspray and deodorant are producing nearly half of all VOC emissions that create ozone smog in urban areas.

“Air pollution is a result of emissions from both human activities and natural sources,” said Brian McDonald, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). “The reason we need to understand the types of things that Jessica measures is to know what emission sources are getting into the atmosphere.”

So while most of the U.S. was quarantined at home, Gilman and her colleagues at NOAA went to work. She designed an experiment to collect air samples around the clock near the NOAA lab in Boulder and help analyze samples collected from a small plane doing laps over New York City. Gilman fed the air samples into custom-built instruments in her lab that acted like robotic noses, sniffing out the different chemicals in Gilman’s atmospheric cocktails, showing how atmospheric chemistry was changing by the minute.

The experiment went well for the first few months of the pandemic — until the wildfires started.

Gilman has spent a lot of time around wildfires, but even she has never seen anything quite like the blazes that consumed the Western U.S. last summer. In many states — including Colorado — the 2020 wildfire season was the most devastating on record. The wildfires burned a combined area larger than Connecticut and left a thick haze hanging over the entire West Coast for weeks. The smoke in Colorado quickly overwhelmed Gilman’s local measurements for COVID-related changes in VOC levels, so she pivoted the experiment to study the wildfires until they died down.

Gilman knows the grim effects wildfires have on air quality. In 2019, she spent her summer dive bombing in and out of wildfire plumes in an old passenger airliner converted into an aerial laboratory. The program was a joint experiment by NASA and NOAA to study the impact of wildfire smoke on air quality in order to improve weather and climate forecasts. Scientists from around the U.S. flew over 100 fires collecting air samples and studying the blazes with sophisticated instruments packed into the body of the plane. Gilman participated in five flights before she returned to Boulder to analyze the samples.

Each mission started at a National Guard hangar in Idaho, where Gilman and three dozen other scientists spent several hours calibrating their instruments in NASA’s winged climate lab. When the instruments were prepped, the scientists flew up to eight hours at a time to the largest wildfires burning in the Western U.S. Once they were in range of a fire, the pilots swung the jet low through the smoke plumes so Gilman and her team could collect samples. The air was pumped in through specially designed window plates outfitted with large, straw-like inlets connected to bespoke air storage containers inside the plane for storage.

It’s not a comfortable ride between the quick aerial maneuvers, turbulence, heat and smoke. Often, it smelled like someone was burning a campfire right in the fuselage, Gilman said.

“It can be really stressful when you’re on one of these air campaigns,” said Gilman. “It’s dark, it’s hot, it’s really bumpy and you’re doing all this crazy maneuvering. You’re just toast by the end of the day.”

Yet Gilman said it was this kind of fieldwork that attracted her to atmospheric science in the first place while obtaining her PhD at �� Boulder. After she completed her doctorate, she became a researcher at CIRES in 2006 and joined NOAA as a federal scientist in 2016. Since then, she has spent time monitoring air quality from ships in the Arctic Ocean to remote forest research stations.

“She’s highly motivated to do atmospheric research and willing to do whatever it takes to get the work done,” said �� chemistry professor Veronica Vaida, who introduced Gilman to atmospheric research. “She’s a natural for fieldwork.”

For the past 15 years, Gilman’s research on VOCs has been a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex relationships between human activity and climate change. Gilman and her team are still parsing the data from both the 2020 wildfire and COVID experiments. But one surprising result they found, she said, was that the pandemic roughly halved the amount of VOCs and primary pollutants from car engines in Boulder’s atmosphere compared to previous years, but the effect on ozone levels in many cities — including Boulder — may not have changed or even increased due to complex chemical effects.

Their research will be critical for making informed decisions about how to keep people safe in our climate-changed future.

“This shows the impact that humans have on the atmosphere and gives us the sense that we can change the trajectory,” she said. “I hope what we learned from COVID will help improve the choices that are made in the future to keep the air quality gains.”

Illustrations by Jeffrey Smith

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Re-creating the Hand

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Re-creating the Hand Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/10/2020 - 23:00

Daniel Strain

Humans do a lot of things with their hands: We squeeze avocados at the grocery store, scratch our dogs behind the ears and hold each others’ hands. These are things that many people who have lost limbs can’t do.

�� Boulder’s Jacob Segil is working to bring back feeling to amputees' fingertips, including veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The biomedical engineer is an instructor in the Engineering Plus program and a research healthcare scientist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

“In my field, we have a gold standard, which is the physiological hand,” Segil said. “We’re trying to re-create it, and we’re still so far off.”

Far off, but closer than you might think. Segil is a participant in a long-running research effort led by Dustin Tyler at Case Western Reserve University and the VA. The team has used a unique neural interface and a series of electronic sensors to recreate a sense of touch for a small number of amputees who are missing their hands.

In a study published in April 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports, the group demonstrated just how effective this sensory restoration technology can be — helping one amputee experience his hand adopting a series of postures, such as a gesture resembling the thumbs-up sign.

For Segil, who recently received a $1 million Career Development Award from the VA to continue his work in Colorado, the project is a chance to use his engineering skills to help people.

“As a VA researcher, your work can help people who have served our country,” Segil said. “It’s a powerful motivator.”

Photo courtesy Jacob Segil

�� researcher aims to bring a sense of touch to amputees' hands

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Up, Up and Away

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Up, Up and Away Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Of course the engineers invited the drones.

They performed brilliantly.

Given a starring role in the formal Aug. 26 debut of �� Boulder’s $10 million Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building, the pair of Phantom 4 Pros did just what they were supposed to — hoist a six-foot white ribbon from the lawn and gently deliver it to the front of the dignitaries’ stage. There, leaning over the edge, benefactor Ann Smead snapped her scissors. A cheer went up, and so did the drones, which shot skyward.

The new 178,000-square-foot East Campus building, home of the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, includes a bioastronautics lab, a payload operations center with a real-time communications link to the International Space Station and an indoor drone testing space.

Days earlier, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine dropped by, meeting with students, professors, university leaders and business executives. NASA provides more research money to �� Boulder than to any other public university, and it spends more in Colorado than in any other state.

“Science books have been rewritten based on what comes out of Colorado,” Bridenstine said.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

The Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences includes a bioastronautics lab, a payload operations center with a real-time communications link to the International Space Station and an indoor drone testing space.

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Mining for Gold in Space

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Mining for Gold in Space Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Joshua Nelson and Jeff Zehnder

Imagine shooting bacteria into space and getting gold in return.

Using biomining techniques — which involves mixing specialized microbes and water to extract metals from rock — it might be possible, according to Luis Zea of ��’s College of Engineering & Applied Science.

On Earth, biomining accounts for 15 percent of the copper and 5 percent of the gold extracted. In space, there’s opportunity for harvesting much more — and not just copper and gold.

“In space, there are virtually limitless amounts of some of the 44 endangered elements that could face supply limitations here,” Zea, an assistant research professor in aerospace engineering, said over the summer.

Armed with a seed grant from the �� Boulder Research & Innovation Office, Zea and co-investigator Jesse Colangelo, a geological sciences research associate, will explore the effectiveness of biomining from lunar, Martian and asteroid sources using the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis in simulated, reduced-gravity conditions. The bacterium is often found in marine sediments.

The financial impact on Earth could be huge.

Currently, NASA has plans for a robotic exploration of the asteroid 16 Psyche, located between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid contains an estimated $700 quintillion worth of nickel, iron and other precious metals.

“Its value is more than the total amount of all money in circulation worldwide,” Zea said.

Also, space mining could provide the materials for building future space stations or deep space probes, eliminating the need for rocket loads of material from Earth.

“Space biomining may sound pretty sci-fi today, but it will be a reality in the future,” said Zea. “We’re uniquely positioned in BioServe to be on the ground floor of this work.”

Photo by Victor Habbick Visions / Science Photo Library

A metal-extracting bacterium could change mining as we know it.

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The Creator of NASA's First Podcast

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 18:36:43 +0000

The Creator of NASA's First Podcast Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 12:36

Amanda K. Clark

Laurie Cantillo, NASA communicator and educator, is on a mission to get more people engaged in science — especially girls.

Laurie Cantillo (Jour’80) was fresh out of college when she first spotted the Milky Way during an outdoor education trip in Utah. Since then, the director of communication and education at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been on a mission to share the wonders of space with the world.

At ��, Cantillo produced a space film in her astronomy intro course. It was shown in Fiske Planetarium and set to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album. After graduating, she worked as a radio anchor, reporter and program director for 30 years before landing in NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she was a writer and public affairs specialist for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, led by Alan Stern (PhDAstro’89).

When Pluto became visible through a sequence of images in 2015, Cantillo noticed a large bright spot that resembled a heart. That day, she wrote a short article about the icy formation now called Sputnik Planitia and shared it on NASA’s website and social media channels.

I appreciate the value of audio and wanted to share the powerful stories of the people behind our missions — their struggles, and how ‘failing’ is an essential ingredient for success.

The next morning, the mainstream media had erupted with headlines featuring Pluto’s “heart.”

While in D.C., Cantillo produced NASA’s first podcast, Gravity Assist, which refers to the slingshot effect a spacecraft gets when it uses the gravity of a planet or object to speed up or alter its course. The podcast’s first season, in 2017, was hosted by chief scientist Jim Green and featured lively discussions about top discoveries and mysteries in space science. Each episode’s guest reveals the “gravity assist” that propelled them into their field of research.

“I appreciate the value of audio and wanted to share the powerful stories of the people behind our missions — their struggles, and how ‘failing’ is an essential ingredient for success,” said Cantillo, who grew up in Parker, Colo.

Today, Cantillo and her California-based JPL team often set up telescopes in public spaces and wait for curious viewers to walk by: “It never gets old to see how surprised and delighted people are to see the Moon’s craters, Saturn’s rings or Jupiter’s stripes through a telescope for the first time,” she said.

Cantillo credits her son David for planting the idea of a career pivot to NASA. He had encouraged her to apply.

“I was able to achieve a couple extra years of ‘coolness’ by working at NASA and JPL. With a teenager, that’s priceless,” she said.

Cantillo hopes her work inspires others to learn more about space and pursue STEM careers.

“When I was growing up, it never occurred to me to be a scientist or engineer, since there were so few female role models,” she said. “Had I been in school today, I might have chosen a different path.”

When she sees young girls wearing NASA T-shirts and playing with Space Legos, or receives a letter from a child who now wants to be a scientist after meeting someone from JPL, she knows her work is having an impact.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Cantillo said.

Laurie Cantillo, NASA communicator and educator, is on a mission to get more people engaged in science — especially girls.

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Infographic: ��'s Martian Missions

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:56:21 +0000

Infographic: ��'s Martian Missions Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:56

�� scientists have been involved in learning about our neighbor in the solar system since at least the 1960s.

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Russo-American Space Adventures

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:55:11 +0000

Russo-American Space Adventures Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:55

The United States and Russia have often been at odds, sometimes perilously. But in the mid-1970s, a landmark adventure brought the superpowers together.

The United States and Russia have often been at odds, sometimes perilously. But in the mid1970s, a landmark adventure brought the superpowers together, providing much-needed détente amid the Cold War and establishing a sphere of collegial partnership that continues today.

On July 18, 1975, a space capsule containing two Russians (then Soviets) and a second capsule toting Americans Vance Brand (Bus’53; AeroEngr’60) and two fellow NASA astronauts maneuvered into position far above Metz, France, and docked with each other.

The mission, dubbed the ApolloSoyuz Test Project, was the rival nations’ first joint space operation and the start of a collaborative tradition.

“My fondest memory was liftoff,” said Brand, who prior to rendezvous spotted the approaching Soviet spacecraft through an onboard telescope. “We all had been test pilots and wanted to go higher and faster.”

Over the next two days, the multinational space travelers shared meals, conducted experiments and exchanged flags and gifts.

They’d come to know and like each other long before liftoff.

Brand, Thomas Stafford and Donald “Deke” Slaton had visited the Soviet Union’s space center three times, and Soviets Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov had visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center, also three times. They flew simulators and learned more about the other country’s space technology and, importantly, culture.

During these visits the men took intensive one-on-one language courses. The U.S. astronauts spoke Russian, the Soviet cosmonauts replied in English. Everybody mangled phrases, prompting gales of laughter.

“The opposite crew always appreciated the humor,” said Brand, now 88, who went on to command three space shuttle missions.

Since 1975, the vastness of space has brought Americans and Russians closer still.

In 2001, for example, Jim Voss (MAeroEngr’74), along with astronaut Susan Helms and cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, traveled to the International Space Station aboard the shuttle Discovery, spending 167 days in space together. (During the mission Voss, now a scholarin-residence at �� Boulder, and Helms conducted the longest spacewalk ever: 8 hours and 56 minutes).

In 2017, NASA and the Russian space agency announced a partnership for human exploration of the moon and deep space.

And in March two Americans and three Russians entered a sealed structure in Russia as part of a four-month mock moon flight that would include a virtual reality lunar landing.

For a partnership begun 44 years ago, the beat goes on. Through Vance Brand, �� was there at the start.

The United States and Russia have often been at odds, sometimes perilously. But in the mid-1970s, a landmark adventure brought the superpowers together.

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These �� Grads Just Won $100,000

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:49:58 +0000

These �� Grads Just Won $100,000 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:49

Eric Gershon

With a high-tech safety gadget for walkers, undergrads hit the jackpot in ��'s latest New Venture Challenge.

Timothy Visos-Ely had a lot to celebrate in May: Not only did he and high-school sweetheart Amy Eichman (IntPhys’19) both earn �� Boulder degrees, but Visos-Ely’s souped-up, midnight-gray Nissan Xterra was about ready for summer off-roading.

Also, he’d just won $100,000.

On April 3, before a live audience of about 350, Visos-Ely (EngrPlus’19) and four teammates, all fellow engineering undergraduates, placed first in the 11th annual New Venture Challenge, �� Boulder’s top competition for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“This means we get to have a decent shot at launching this company,” said the 22-year-old Kansas-bred CEO of StrideTech, a budding medical device firm that emerged from the team’s senior design project.

In all, 230 students, faculty and affiliates participated in the latest NVC, which this year awarded a record $250,000-plus from a mix of donors, companies and investors.

The StrideTech team designed a digital accessory for walkers intended to improve user health and safety. The device, SmartStep, aims to minimize falls and correct lapses in posture by assessing gait patterns and relaying real-time information about force exerted on the walker.

“Very little weight should be applied to the walker,” said Visos-Ely, whose grandmother’s reliance on a walker inspired the project.

The first-place finish catapults StrideTech’s co-founders into postcollegiate life as bona fide entrepreneurs. This summer, Visos-Ely, Max Watrous (EngrPlus’19), Humsini Acharya (EngrPlus’19) and Andrew Plum (MechEngr’19) will work fulltime on their product and company as participants in Catalyze ��, a threemonth business accelerator program. [NVC teammate Tom Saunders (MechEngr’19) has other plans.]

If Visos-Ely gets a breather, he’ll recharge outdoors — hiking, mountain biking, tubing or off-roading in the Xterra. It’s equipped with a suspension he rebuilt himself. “I’ve always liked fixing things,” he said. “The reason why I work on my truck is to make it better. I find ways to improve it. That’s kind of what inventing is — looking at what’s out there and making it better.”

Learn more about the NVC at www.colorado.edu/nvc.

With a high-tech safety gadget for walkers, undergrads hit the jackpot in ��'s latest New Venture Challenge.

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Inquiry: Talking Moon and Mars with Engineering Dean Bobby Braun

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:23:40 +0000

Inquiry: Talking Moon and Mars with Engineering Dean Bobby Braun Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:23

The dean of �� Boulder's College of Engineering & Applied Science is a former NASA chief technologist. Here he talks about the moon, Mars and why we should think there's life on other planets.

There’s a lot of talk about sending humans back to the moon. Do you think that should be a high priority?
The U.S. space program should always have a flagship goal. When the United States is fully committed to achieving its space goals, our nation benefits in many ways — economically, in national security and with quality of life. Our nation should commit to becoming deep space explorers.

What could we learn from another moon visit that would help us put people on other planets — Mars, say?
Returning to the moon is one path to reduce some of the operations risk of a human Mars mission. The moon is much closer and therefore a safer step. While there are distinct technologies needed for surface operations on Mars relative to the moon, learning how to live and work in space beyond low-Earth orbit will require new space transportation systems, habitation systems, autonomy and navigation technologies.

Could we get humans to Mars now? Could we get them back to Earth?
Yes. Absolutely. With the technology currently available, we could land humans on Mars and return them safely to Earth. No Nobel prizes in physics (like those �� already has to its name) need be won — we know the hardware and approach it would require. However, that question hinges on much more than the technological aspects of the mission, including stable support from Congress and the American people, as well as alignment among all facets of the space community — government, academia and industry.

Do you expect this will happen in your lifetime?
Yes. We are certainly trending closer and closer, as a nation and as a society. Personally, I’ve been dreaming of seeing humans walk on Mars ever since I watched the first U.S. planetary lander, Viking, touch down on the Mars surface over 40 years ago.

You were NASA’s chief technologist. What were some highlights of the job?
Working with Congress and the White House to create a new organization within NASA that invests in the technologies needed for future missions in space was definitely one. Creating a foundational research and technology program that extended beyond the next mission was, and still is, a critical need for an agency that plans to send humans to the moon and Mars, discover life on other planets and search for Earth-like planets around other stars. Representing the amazing work being done by the technologists and applied scientists across the agency, in academia and industry, was also the honor of my lifetime. Lastly, working across many different government agencies to help create the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Robotics Initiative and the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership was time well spent.

How is commercial space travel likely to influence NASA’s priorities?
Industrial strength is a hallmark of the United States space program. The fact that the U.S. space industry has emerged as a major provider is extremely exciting, even enabling, for some of the national missions under consideration. NASA has been increasingly leveraging its relationship to commercial space partners. This relationship has proven to be mutually beneficial and is still growing.

�� is about to open a new aerospace engineering center. How will it make us better?
This facility will allow us to grow our pipeline for talent, connect us more closely to industry across the state and the nation and serve as a connector for aerospace activities across our campus. The new building positions us at the center of the aerospace innovation ecosystem.

You once edited the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. What’s your all-time favorite spacecraft?
Pathfinder, which landed on Mars on July 4, 1997, obviously holds a special place in my heart. I was part of the team responsible for safely landing it and the first-ever Mars rover, Sojourner, on the surface of the Red Planet.

What’s the best reason to believe there’s life on other planets?
Given the sheer size of the universe and the massive number of planets out there, one has to consider the mathematical probabilities. To me, answering this age old question is just a matter of time.

Condensed and edited.

The former NASA chief technologist and current �� engineering dean discusses the moon, Mars and why we should think there's life on other planets.

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Engineering & Technology

Images From the James Webb Space Telescope

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Breath of Fresh Air

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Re-creating the Hand

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Up, Up and Away

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Mining for Gold in Space

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The Creator of NASA's First Podcast

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Infographic: ����������'s Martian Missions

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Russo-American Space Adventures

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These ���������� Grads Just Won $100,000

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