Southwestern Oregon Community College wishes to congratulate our S.P.E.A.R. (STEAM Pathways Experimental & Academic Research) Team Member Cameron Miller for being selected for a 2023-24 Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium (OSGC) Student Academic Research Review (STARR) award in the amount of $3,000 for Nuclear Propulsion research.

Cameron is currently a sophomore Mechanical Engineering student at Southwestern and plans to transfer into the Nuclear Engineering program at Oregon State University (OSU) after he graduates. For his research project, Cameron will be investigating the current state of research into nuclear propulsion systems with particular applications to aerospace.

Read the full article on Cannon Beach Gazette.

Author Credit: Cannon Beach Gazette

Image Credit: Cannon Beach Gazette

Sophomore electrical engineering student Grace McKenna started working with NASA in the Here to Observe (H2O) program in September 2023. The program gives undergraduate students the opportunity to observe and interact with NASA Planetary Science Division teams, with the goal of inspiring historically marginalized groups to be a part of the STEM workforce.

McKenna is currently working on the Europa Clipper mission that will launch later this year.

“The mission is to send a spacecraft to Europa to fly by and take different captures, measurements, all kinds of data, to let us know a little bit more about Europa because it has an ice shell,” McKenna said. “We are looking to see what it’s composed of because the details of that are still unknown.”

Read the full article on udayton.edu

Author Credit: University of Dayton Blogs

Image Credit: University of Dayton Blogs

UNLV students are launching a balloon 100,000 ft. with live-streaming cameras. Why?

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — UNLV engineering students plan to launch a balloon on Oct. 14 to capture “valuable engineering data” during upcoming solar eclipses.

“The last time the moon blocked out the sun in 2017, the skies above Las Vegas were covered in clouds, and rain poured down across the Valley,” said officials with the university. “A rare celestial event obscured by an unlikely weather phenomenon for a desert city and its inhabitants.”

Read the full story on KTNV.com.

The next series of launches is set for early April for the total solar eclipse!

Author Credit: KTNV.com

Image Credit: UNLV

From stargazing as a child in his hometown of Evansville to working as an undergraduate researcher inside the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Upham Hall, Nick Barmore has always had an interest in space.

That passion, combined with the support of UW-Whitewater’s chemistry department, earned Barmore a prestigious $4,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC) as part of the Undergraduate Research Awards Program.

Watch the YouTube video and read the full story on uww.edu.

Written by Chris Lindeke | Video by Kyle Winter | Photos by Craig Schreiner

NASA is on the quest for a better battery — one that is lighter, longer lasting and able to survive the extreme temperatures found in space — and a Clemson graduate student’s research could help lay the groundwork.

Alan Rowland, a graduate student in the Clemson University Department of Physics and Astronomy, has received a prestigious NASA SC Space Grant fellowship to explore the role nitrogen plays in sulfurized polymer-based lithium-sulfur batteries.

Read the full article on News.Clemson.edu.

Author Credit: Cindy Landrum

Image Credit: News.Clemson.edu.

Three Utah State University engineering students were awarded funding on behalf of the Utah Space Grant Consortium for internships this past summer.

Adam Weaver, a recent graduate student at USU studying mechanical engineering with an emphasis in aerospace engineering, and Payton Taylor, a senior also studying mechanical engineering with an emphasis in aerospace engineering, received $6,200 each for their internships at Northrop Grumman. They worked in the propulsion systems department for four months.

“I was very thankful for this opportunity and excited that I was a recipient,” Weaver said. “The internship was a great experience.”

Read the full article on USU.edu.

Author Credit: Sydney Dahle

Image Credit: (Photo Credit: NASA)

After a decade-long project, the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association, or YUAA, is gearing up to launch a satellite into outer space in the coming year.

Through their CubeSat project, YUAA aims to send a device called a cosmic ray detector aboard a NASA rocket into orbit around the Earth. Though the initiative began in 2015, it has faced delays — most recently, one of their computers catching fire — which has bumped their target completion date from winter 2024 to 2025.

Still, CubeSat co-leads Rome Thorstenson ’25 and Matilda Vary ’25 are hopeful that the decade-long effort will soon bear fruit. Since the program’s start, two full “generations” of students have graduated, Thorstenson said. When he joined the group as a first year, he was brand new to the field.

Read the full article on “Yale Daily News.”

Author Credit: Vishnu Bharathram

Image Credit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/topics/cubesats

University of Massachusetts Amherst mechanical engineering major Brendan Scott has received a NASA undergraduate fellowship to study how insulative polymers could be turned into high thermal conductivity polymers. These polymers are desirable for a wide variety of applications ranging from space exploration to electronics that need to dissipate heat quickly and efficiently.

Read the full story on umass.edu.

Author Credit: Julia Westbrook

The NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium (CTSGC) has awarded Fairfield University School of Engineering and Computing with four research grants to fund research and design projects this year. In fall of 2023, assistant professor of computer science Sidike Paheding, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering David Shekhtman, PhD, Seamus Dwyer ’24, and Dermot Warner ’24 received research grants. Lucas Danburg ’27 was awarded an undergraduate scholarship, and Gabriel Grant ’25 received the Community College Transfer Scholarship.

Read the full story on Fairfield News here.

Author Credit: Fairfield News

Image Credit: NASA