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TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.—Sir Richard Branson basked in the late morning New Mexico sunshine on Sunday. Beaming his white, toothy grin for all to see, the 70-year-old adventurer looked resplendent in his blue flight suit as he stood alongside the pilots, Dave Mackay and co-pilot Mike Masucci, who had just rocketed him above 85 km.

“I have wanted to do this since I was a child,” Branson said. “But honestly, nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space.”

If you think Richard Branson’s space flight on Sunday morning was all about the pomp and simply served to feed the ego of a celebrity billionaire, you would not be wrong. Virgin Galactic hired Stephen Colbert to host the livestream, after all. R&B musician Khalid performed onstage following the mission. It was gaudy. It was showtime. It was absolutely a party.

But make no mistake, this flight was also historic.

Read the full article here.

Author: Eric Berger

Image Credit: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

West Virginia Space Grant Consortium, alumna, Emily Calandrelli, is doing amazing things in the world of STEM Engagement!

TV science star Emily Calandrelli leads Hoda, Jenna and three kids in a fun science experiment featured in her new Netflix show, “Emily’s Wonder Lab.” She hopes the show will inspire kids and especially young girls to find joy and excitement in science.

Watch the News clip here.

Image Credit: #WVSGC

“What if this fails?”

“What if that fails?”

“Astronauts doing a hypothetical spacewalk on the moon have suffered a spacesuit malfunction. You have ten minutes to deploy a lunar rescue module that’s five miles away. Your job is to design a module that will effectively be able to respond and rescue them. How do you plan and design it?”

Those are the words of Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, former NASA mission leader and mission control flight director. He’s now an Department of Aerospace Engineering associate teaching professor. Those words cut to the core of what he teaches as part of the department’s astronautics curriculum and reflect the type of critical thinking that senior students are tasked with.

Read the full article here.

Image Credit: Iowa State University

Author: John Burnett-Larkins

BATON ROUGE, May 4, 2021—Next year, Louisiana State University (LSU) will be the first university in the world to put technology on the Moon. The Tiger Eye 1 research mission is part of a multi-disciplinary university-industry collaboration to make future space travel safer for people and equipment by providing insight into the complex radiation environment in space. LSU’s radiation detection device is now officially on the manifest for the broader IM-1 mission, the first in a series of commercial flights (and the first-ever to land on the Moon) that will bring science and technology to the lunar surface through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. This will also be the first time the U.S. lands on the Moon since 1972 and the Apollo program.

Students in five different LSU colleges and schools are leading the charge under the direction of Assistant Professor Jeffery Chancellor in the LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy, head of its Space Radiation Transport & Applied Nuclear (SpaRTAN) lab. All are undergraduate seniors from Louisiana.

Read the full article.

Image Credit: Eddy Perez/LSU

Author: Elsa Hahne

Abraham Correa-Medina (BS biology ’19) describes himself as a first-generation Mexican-American and first-generation college graduate. This fall, he will become a first-generation medical student, on his way to becoming a first-generation physician.

During his three-and-a-half years at AU, Correa-Medina’s achievements spanned academics, lab research, competitive sports, and volunteering. He maintained a 3.82 GPA, competed for AU’s Division I wrestling team and went to the conference championships, received a grant to conduct cancer research in the laboratory of Professor of Biology and Department Chair Katie DeCicco-Skinner, worked as a first responder at a local fire department for nearly four years, tutored high school students through DC’s Latin American Youth Center, and helped build a multi-sports complex for Courts for Kids in Tercera Linea, Paraguay.

Read the full article here.

Author: Patty Housman

Image Credit: American University

Team Falcon, one of two rover teams competing from The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, has won third place overall in the collegiate division at NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC).

Team Falcon relied on light weight and simplicity when it redesigned a rover from a previous class for the pandemic altered competition. The rover weighed in under 150 pounds, extremely light compared to other rovers in the UAH fleet.

Read the full article on the UAH website.

Image Credit: UAH

Author: Jim Steele

North Carolina’s Space Grant and Sea Grant programs are pleased to announce recipients of joint graduate research fellowships for 2021-22: Maya Hoon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Jessica Richter of East Carolina University.

This fellowship provides support for graduate students researching high-priority needs within North Carolina watersheds, coastal areas and nearshore environments. The graduate students will utilize data from the vast archives and remote-sensing capabilities of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including data collected from airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles or unpiloted submersibles or other technologies in their work.

Read the full article on the NCSGC website.

Image Credit: NC Space Grant & NC Sea Grant

Author: Lee Cannon

What: John Mather Nobel Scholars Program

Who: Current interns at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Awards: $3,000 Travel Allowance for Presentation of Research

The John Mather Nobel Scholarship Program was established in 2008 by the John and Jane Mather Foundation for Science and the Arts. The program is open to current NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center based undergraduate and graduate student interns. Each year the program awards travel allowances towards the cost of presenting research papers at professional conferences. Applicants must have demonstrated high academic achievement, have a strong interest in space and Goddard Space Flight Center, be a rising undergraduate junior, senior or graduate student, and be currently holding a Goddard-based research internship.

Selected students will be recognized as John Mather Nobel Scholars and receive a $3,000 travel allowance towards the cost of presenting research papers at professional conferences. Recipients will meet with Dr John C Mather, Senior Astrophysicist and Goddard Fellow and Nobel Prize recipient, and other distinguished individuals.

• Application Deadline: July 9, 2021
• Mentor Assessment Deadline: July 11, 2021
• Anticipated Award Announcements: July 23, 2021
• Program Website: https://www.spacegrant.org/mather/
• Apply On-line at: https://spacegrant.net/apps/mather

The Spring 2021 NC Space Grant-funded NASA interns are looking back at their accomplishments in the past semester. Although their internships were remote, they took advantage of the unique opportunities to gain valuable knowledge and skills.

“Through their sponsorship of internships at NASA centers and facilities, NC Space Grant is instrumental in the agency’s efforts to encourage students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said Lynnette Bishop Madison, NASA Office of STEM Engagement internships manager.

Read the full article here.