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Connecticut College is now part of the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium, a NASA-funded program administered at the state level that sponsors faculty and student research and student internships across the U.S.

Affiliated institutions include four-year colleges and universities, community colleges, science centers, institutes and museums. In Connecticut, the University of Hartford administers grants as the state’s lead institution for the program. The addition of Conn this year brings the total members of post-secondary institutions in the state to 27.

Assistant Teaching Professor of Astronomy Alex Gianninas, who serves as Conn’s campus director for the program, said he first learned of it while teaching at the University of Hartford. When a Conn student sought funding last fall to attend a conference in Hawaii, Gianninas looked into the Space Grant. He learned only students and faculty at member institutions could apply, and Conn wasn’t a member.

Read the full story on conncoll.edu. (Original post date: Sept. 26, 2024)

Author Credit: Connecticut College

Image Credit: Connecticut Space Grant Consortium

AMES, Iowa – A Clinton County elementary school student team was selected as Best in Show for Crop Growth in the 2023-24 Plant the Moon Challenge. Their project and report were featured in the online closing symposium seen by groups around the world.

The Plant the Moon Challenge is a global science experiment, learning activity and inspirational, project based learning challenge to see who can grow the best crops using lunar or Martian regolith simulants. The Institute of Competition Sciences runs the program in collaboration with NASA and other science advisors as part of the Artemis mission. Educators are now invited to register teams for this learning opportunity for the 2024-25 year.

Radishes and lettuce for the win

In the 2023-24 challenge, Clinton County’s Smithtown Academy Bees from Lost Nation submitted “How do different fertilizers combined with soil and moon regolith affect lettuce and radish growth?” for review by NASA scientists. The team of two, Johann, fourth grade, and Henry, fifth grade, studied the effect of different soil supplements on the growth of lettuce and radishes planted in 50/50 soil and lunar simulant mixtures. The participants chose lettuce and radish plants because they wanted one plant growing above the soil and one below the soil. They evaluated bone meal, blood meal and liquid kelp because they have different nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels.

“I really appreciated [their] great care in the germination of [their] plants by covering the pots with plastic to retain moisture,” said Melanie Mormile, scientist advisory board member and associate dean of research at Missouri University of Science and Technology. She said the team did a great job with the “careful thinning of the plants so that the remaining plants that they actually were going to run their tests on did not get stressed from being overcrowded.”

After a 10-week growing period, they found their hypothesis of the soil and moon regolith supplemented with bone meal as the best for growing radishes due to the higher phosphorus helping with root growth incorrect. They also hypothesized that the blood meal-supplemented pots would be best for lettuce because they had the most nitrogen, which is good for leaf growth; this hypothesis was correct.

Read the full article on MorningAgClips.com

Image Credit: Jessica Ihns

Author Credit: Morning Ag Clips

Original Post Date: Oct. 27, 2024

DURHAM — The University of New Hampshire announced it has been awarded $24.3 million by NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to build sensors for an alert system that will monitor the effects of space weather and the solar wind — caused by explosions on the sun — for potential interruptions to key technology like satellite communications, electric power grids and GPS systems.

“We are extremely excited to play a critical role in the nation’s space weather alert system,” said Lynn Kistler, professor of physics and astronomy and director of UNH’s Space Science Center. “This allows us to use our scientific expertise to help address vital national safety interests and build on UNH’s long history of scientific and operational missions, expanding the range of the UNH Space Science Center’s strong proficiency and skill in space instrumentation.”

As part of the solar wind plasma sensor contract, UNH will develop and build two sensors for the Lagrange 1 Series project to monitor the solar wind — a supersonic flow of hot particles known as plasma, from the sun. The sensors at L1 will help identify and give a ‘head’s up’ warning of any concerns in about 100 minutes for slower events and about ten minutes for faster events.

This data will be used in both real time for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center alert system, which issues forecasts, warnings and alerts that help mitigate any potential issues caused by space weather, as well as be available to the scientific community to study the response of the Earth’s environment to space weather events.

“While the data may be used in space weather impact studies, this is an operational mission to help raise the alarm if any large-scale solar wind structures, such as coronal mass ejections, passing the L1 point are considered dangerous,” Toni Galvin, research professor and director of N.H. Space Grant Consortium. “Because of that, the instrument requirements are more stringent, and they have to be able to measure the most extreme conditions with high accuracy, because those are the conditions that can cause the most potential harm to technology.”

Read the full article on Fosters.com.

Image Credit: NASA/SDO Provided by UNH

Author Credit: Special to Seacoastonline | Portsmouth Herald

Original Post Date: Oct. 29, 2024

Naseeha Cardwell, a chemical engineering PhD candidate, has received the Dorothy L. Simpson Leadership Award from the Seattle chapter of Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation (ARCS).

The award is in recognition of leadership, intellectual curiosity, community commitment and dedication to the greater good. The ARCS Foundation supports scientific and technological education and provides financial awards to students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

This award was given to Cardwell in acknowledgement of her dedication to scientific innovation, particularly in the realm of renewable biofuels, as well as in tribute to her mentorship and leadership within the academic community.

Originally from Des Moines, Washington, Cardwell came to WSU after receiving her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University.

“Cardwell is advancing efforts to upgrade bio-oil to usable biofuels,” said Jean-Sabin McEwen, her advisor and a professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. “She is increasing the potential for their viability as compared to petroleum-based fuels.”

Read the full article on News.WSU.edu.

Image Credit: Naseeha Cardwell

Author Credit: Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture

Original Post Date: Oct. 4, 2024

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As part of a large-scale effort to unlock clues about the origins of life on Earth, Brown University researchers are analyzing rare fragments from the asteroid Bennu, hoping to reveal its ancient secrets.

The work is happening at the NASA-funded Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB), which is housed on the University’s campus and led by Brown planetary scientist Ralph Milliken.

The researchers at RELAB are among approximately 200 scientists around the world to have received samples from Bennu to date. The analysis is part of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which was the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and deliver it to Earth.

“These samples are the best examples we have today of some of the most primitive material in our solar system,” said Milliken, who also directs the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium and is an associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown. “It’s really amazing and humbling to know our group is one of a handful of specialized spectroscopy labs who are working with this material that has been in space for the last four and a half billion years.”

NASA’s robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in 2016 and returned in September 2023, delivering a container filled with about four ounces of rock and dust from Bennu, which it collected on Oct. 20, 2020. Samples of Bennu started to arrive at Brown in November 2023 for initial analysis due to the lab and University’s long history of working with sensitive extraterrestrial samples.

Read the full article on Brown.edu.

Image Credit: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

Author Credit: Juan Siliezar | juan_siliezar@brown.edu

Original Post Date: Oct. 29, 2024

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — A team from Penn State Harrisburg spent a week at a NASA facility over the summer, building a scientific experiment and sending it to space through the RockOn! program.

NASA’s RockOn! is a weeklong, hands-on workshop teaching participants how to create a sounding rocket experiment and then launch it into space at the end of the workshop.

Penn State Harrisburg students Trent Townsend, a mechanical engineering major, and Neil Lerch, a graduate student in electrical engineering, and University Park student Sara Jambhekar, who is studying aerospace engineering, participated, along with Brian Maicke, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State Harrisburg. The students’ participation was funded by the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.

Maicke and the students spent a week in Virginia at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, where they built a scientific payload consisting of a Geiger counter, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure, and temperature measurements.

Read the full article on PSU.edu.

Image Credit: Brian Maicke / Penn State. Creative Commons

Author Credit: Penn State

Original Post Date: Oct. 21, 2024

Seven University of Alabama at Birmingham undergraduate students have been awarded NASA Alabama Space Grant Consortium scholarships, and two UAB graduate students have been selected as research fellows.

The scholarship and fellowship programs encourage and equip students to pursue career and research opportunities within the space science and aerospace technology fields.

Designated as NASA Space Grant Scholars, the seven UAB undergraduate recipients demonstrated a proficiency in research and an aptitude for space-related careers. They have been awarded scholarships ranging from $750-$1,500. Each student will conduct an outreach activity to educate and inform the surrounding community on science and technology.

Lalitha Appana is an 18-year-old biomedical sciences major from Cumming, Georgia. Appana is a UABTeach minor and member of the UAB Honors College going into her second year at UAB.

“As an aspiring doctor who loves to teach and wants to help improve the quality of education to all students, I hope to translate my passion in science to enhance the K-12 curriculum as this gives me the optimal opportunity to get involved in the community and make a positive difference in the schools around me,” Appana said.

Read the full article on UAB.edu.

Author Credit: Micah Hardge

Image Credit: ALSGC and UAB

Original Post Date: 7/18/2024

Chandlor Dobbs, an undergraduate senior in biomedical engineering, a member of UAB’s Honor College, and a participant in the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, is a recipient of NASA’s Alabama Space Grant Consortium Scholarship.

This scholarship encourages and equips students to pursue career and research opportunities within the space science and aerospace technology fields, and range from $750-$1,500. As part of the program, Dobbs will conduct an outreach activity to educate and inform the surrounding community on science and technology.

Read the full article on uab.edu.

Author Credit: Hannah Buckelew

Image Credit: UAB

Original Story Post Date: 7/14/2024

Student teams from three U.S. universities became the first to measure what scientists have long predicted: eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. The waves’ telltale signature emerged in data captured during the North American annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) sponsored by NASA.

Through NEBP, high school and university student teams were stationed along the eclipse path through multiple U.S. states, where they released weather balloons carrying instrument packages designed to conduct engineering studies or atmospheric science experiments. A cluster of science teams located in New Mexico collected the data definitively linking the eclipse to the formation of atmospheric gravity waves, a finding that could lead to improved weather forecasting.

Read the full article on nasa.gov.

Image Credit: NASA

Author Credit: NASA

Original Story Post Date: 9/5/2024

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Seventeen graduate students from Penn State have been awarded research fellowships and six undergraduate students from the commonwealth have been awarded scholarships for 2024 from the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium (PSGC).

PSGC is one of 52 NASA Space Grant programs across the country that are part of the NASA-run initiative to support educational initiatives in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Each year PSGC receives funds from the national NASA Space Grant Project to develop and implement student fellowships and scholarships programs. Through this funding PSGC administers the Graduate Fellowship Program and Undergraduate Scholarship Program.

Read the full article on psu.edu.

Author Credit: Pennsylvania State University

Original Story Post Date: 9/3/2024