Dr. R. Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, and former Wisconsin Space Grant Director, has been selected by NASA to lead one of 12 new science and technology payloads that will help us study the Moon and explore more of its surface as part of the agency’s Artemis lunar program. These investigations and demonstrations will help the agency send astronauts to the Moon by 2024 as a way to prepare to send humans to Mars for the first time.

Dr. R. Aileen Yingst is the principal investigator of Hemidall, a flexible camera system for conducting lunar science on commercial vehicles. This innovation includes a single digital video recorder and four cameras: a wide-angle descent imager, a narrow-angle regolith imager, and two wide-angle panoramic imagers. This camera system is intended to model the properties of the Moon’s regolith – the soil and other material that makes up the top later of the lunar surface – and characterize and map geologic features, as well characterize potential landing or trafficability hazards, among other goals.

Read More

Calling Citizen Scientists! Participate in the GLOBE Observer Citizen Science Challenge: GO on the Lewis and Clark Trail through September 2, 2019.

This year NASA and the National Park Service encourage the public to follow in these explorers’ footsteps through a new citizen science challenge from June 1 to Sept. 2. Use your smart phone and the NASA GLOBE Observer (GO) app to map land cover along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trailand elsewhere to assist scientists studying environmental changes.

Read More

Colorado Space Grant Consortium students will work with the PUNCH team to design, build, and integrate an x-ray spectrometer that will compliment the overall science mission.  The PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, is a landmark Small Explorers Program mission that will image beyond the Sun’s outer corona.

PUNCH will consist of a constellation of four suitcase-sized microsatellites or “microsats” that will launch as early as 2022. The microsats will orbit the Earth in formation to study how the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona, connects with the interplanetary medium. PUNCH will provide the first global images of how the solar corona infuses the solar wind with mass and energy.

Read More

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is placing 15 replica statues of Neil Armstrong’s iconic spacesuit in Major League Baseball stadiums across the U.S. Visit the site and follow @airandspace on Twitter for updates on where and when you can spot a statue. Fans will be able to unlock exclusive digital content when interacting with the suit. Follow along and share your pictures using #SnapTheSuit.

Read More

Justin McElderry is a second-year student studying at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Justin is a second-time recipient of WSGC’s NASA Internship and Undergraduate Scholarship. He has been selected for this week’s#WSGCStudentSpotlight!

Read More

NASA is highlighting the legacy of African American women who played a major role in the space race but are only recently getting widespread recognition.

This week, the space agency renamed the street in front of its headquarters Hidden Figures Way.

Hidden Figures is the name of a book and movie that celebrate the contributions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. Its author, Margot Lee Shetterly, was at the unveiling ceremony, along with members of the women’s families.

Read More

Social media users are invited to register to attend the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. This launch, currently targeted for July, will be the next commercial cargo resupply services mission to the International Space Station.

If your passion is to communicate and engage the world via social media, then this is the event for you! Seize the opportunity to be on the front line to blog, tweet or Instagram everything about SpaceX’s 18^th resupply mission. In addition to supplies and equipment, the Dragon spacecraft will deliver several science investigations to the station.

Read more

Young women interested in a career in the aerospace field to pursue higher education degrees in engineering or science or math – apply for the Women in Aerospace Foundation Scholarship! Application Deadline is June 17, 2019.

The WIA Foundation is pleased to provide scholarships to women interested in a career in the aerospace field to pursue higher education degrees in engineering, math or science. One or more awards will be given each year to a rising senior in college, to be applied during the upcoming academic year.

To be eligible for the WIA Foundation Scholarship, an applicant must be interested in pursuing a career in the aerospace field and be a rising junior or senior working towards a bachelor’s degree in engineering, math or science. An applicant must have completed at least two and a half academic years of full-time college work at the time of application and must be currently enrolled in an accredited college or university in the United States or its territories, and plan to be enrolled in the subsequent academic year. Each applicant must have a college grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Applicants must be female of any nationality. Applications will be available on or about about mid-November to mid-December for the subsequent academic year.

Read more

The student robotics team from The University of Alabama won NASA’s grand prize in its Robotics Mining Competition.

“When the final results came out, it was a huge relief to finally see that all the hard work my team and I put in was worth it,” said Max Eastepp, a senior from New Orleans who serves as team lead of the squad, known as Alabama Astrobotics.

Made up of 60 students, primarily from UA’s College of Engineering, Alabama Astrobotics won the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence, the grand prize, in NASA’s 2019 robotic mining competition, NASA announced. UA’s teams previously placed first in 2012 and from 2015-2018.

Read More