AeroSpace Ventures News
Some dark craters on the moon are never exposed to light. Ice could be hiding in these permanently shadowed regions. Paul Hayne (Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences) discusses how scientists are homing in on potential lunar ice reservoirs, which are key to setting up any sort of sustainable lunar infrastructure.
This year, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) celebrates its 75th anniversary—marking 75 years of Boulder's exploration from the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere to the wide expanse of interstellar space—and the university is just getting started. Learn what's in store for the year ahead.
Boulder and Ball Aerospace have been collaborating for decades to solve mysteries of the universe. That partnership was also the university’s first commercial spin-off and it greased the gears of an entrepreneurial engine that continues to power innovation within the university and far beyond.
This summer, NASA announced that it had selected four Space Weather Centers of Excellence, including the Space Weather Operational Readiness Development (SWORD) center at Boulder. As its name suggests, the nearly $10 million center will offer some powerful protection for the planet.
A new project led by Scott Diddams (Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering)—awarded $1M award from the W.M. Keck Foundation—will explore the feasibility of creating a frequency comb detector to synchronize the world’s existing infrared telescopes and make them more precise.
Scientists on a new project led by Boulder will develop “worlds in a box” to study the conditions that might make far away planets habitable. The research team—part of NASA’s Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) program—will be led David Brain (LASP, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences).
A new laboratory for a plasma wind tunnel is taking shape at the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. The project, the vision of Assistant Professor Hisham Ali, will allow his team to study the conditions of atmospheric reentry, when a spacecraft returning to Earth can hit speeds of Mach 30.
A new program is helping Native American undergraduate students delve into astrophysics and more fully participate in scientific research that frequently happens on Indigenous lands. The NSF-supported program is a partnership between Boulder and Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.
As part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), Boulder postdoc Joseph Simon is searching for a phenomenon known as the “gravitational wave background”: giant ripples in space and time that owe their origins in part to supermassive black holes.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will soon get a new “sidekick”—a small but nimble satellite called MANTIS, which will be designed and built at LASP. Like that undersea animal, the spacecraft (about the size of a toaster oven) will be able to observe the night sky in the full range of UV light.