Caitlin Milera

Physicist Keith Goetz developing instruments for new lunar investigations

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (07/17/2019) — The University of Minnesota will contribute instruments to a series of 12 new NASA investigations on the moon in preparation for landing astronauts there in 2024. The payloads will be delivered aboard three landers as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program. Seven will be devoted to planetary science and heliophysics, five to demonstrating new technologies. Launches are tentatively set to begin in 2021.

The U of M project, led by physicist Keith Goetz, will be part of the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE), which will carry out extensive measurements of electromagnetic phenomena on the lunar surface. The principal investigator for LuSEE is U of M College of Science and Engineering alumnus Stuart Bale (M.S. Physics ’92, Ph.D. ’94), now a professor at the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

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A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after launching at 12:29 p.m. EST today (Dec. 5). Dragon will deliver more than 5,700 pounds of NASA cargo and science investigations, including studies of malting barley in microgravity, the spread of fire, and bone and muscle loss.

The spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and is scheduled to arrive at the orbital outpost on Sunday, Dec. 8. Coverage of the spacecraft’s approach and arrival at the space station will begin at 4:30 a.m. EST on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

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📸: NASA TV

Nearly 100 scientists and staff from around the world, including CIRES scientist Ted Scambos, departed last month to conduct fieldwork in one of the most remote and inhospitable areas on Earth: Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. Their aim? To investigate how and when climate change might affect the glacier, including a possible runaway collapse, which would raise global sea levels by up to two feet over the next century and put coastal cities and communities around the world at risk.

“We have been studying this area for many years, but mostly through satellites because it is so difficult to get to,” said Scambos, lead American scientific coordinator for the mission. “This is the biggest effort by far where we’ve actually placed scientists on the ground to study Thwaites Glacier.”

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The first satellite built by students in Mexico for launch from the International Space Station is smaller than a shoebox but represents a big step for its builders.

The project is part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, which offers universities, high schools and non-profit organizations the opportunity to fly small satellites. Innovative technology partnerships keep down the cost, providing students a way to obtain hands-on experience developing flight hardware.

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Near-Space Balloon Challenge hosts middle and high school student teams at UND to send experiments miles above Earth

It can’t be snowing. It can’t be too windy. Ideally, it shouldn’t even be cold, because freezing temperatures complicate things, too.

To launch a weather balloon, conditions need to be right, in other words. That means making the launch in North Dakota in the middle of November is a dicey proposition at best.

And when close to 100 students from around the state are descending on campus to see their weeks and months of hard work — in the form of balloon payloads — ascend through the Earth’s atmosphere, that pumps up the pressure on organizers, too.

But on the weekend of Nov. 22 and 23, sunshine, a breeze and above-zero temperatures meant it was “all systems go” for the Near-Space Balloon Challenge, whose coordinators, UND graduate students and middle and high school students worked together to launch a variety of experiments.

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Happy December! Start with NASA’s calendar when making your lesson plans.

View the NASA website here.

There are fastballs, and then there are cosmic fastballs. Now it seems that the strongest arm in our galaxy might belong to a supermassive black hole that lives smack in the middle of the Milky Way.

Astronomers recently discovered a star whizzing out of the center of our galaxy at the seriously blinding speed of four million miles an hour. The star, which goes by the typically inscrutable name S5-HVS1, is currently about 29,000 light-years from Earth, streaking through the Grus, or Crane, constellation in the southern sky. It is headed for the darkest, loneliest depths of intergalactic space.

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The moon is more than just a pretty face to gaze upon at night. It helps direct our ocean currents and tides, the movement of Earth’s atmosphere and climate, and even the tilt of our planet’s axis.