Space

Doctoral student advancing hypersonic engineering for spacecraft

Megan Maneval — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 19:09:39 +0000

Doctoral student advancing hypersonic engineering for spacecraft Megan Maneval Tue, 12/10/2024 - 12:09

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Mitch Wall is studying atmospheric conditions at the threshold of space to improve future hypersonic vehicles and spacecraft.

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Mars’ infamous dust storms can engulf the entire planet. A new study examines how

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:25:40 +0000

Mars’ infamous dust storms can engulf the entire planet. A new study examines how Daniel William… Mon, 12/09/2024 - 10:25

Daniel Strain

Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.

In a new study, planetary scientists at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars—weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit. The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder at AGU 2024

Check out more earth and space research news from the 2024 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

Heshani Pieris, lead author of the study, said the findings are a first step toward forecasting extreme weather on Mars, just like scientists do on Earth.

“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Pieris, a graduate student at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”

She will present the results Tuesday, Dec. 10 at the 2024 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

To put dust storms under the magnifying glass, the researchers drew on real observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite.

So far, they have identified weather patterns that may underly roughly two-thirds of the major dust storms on Mars. You won’t see Mars weather reporters standing in front of a green screen just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction, said study co-author Paul Hayne.

“We need to understand what causes some of the smaller or regional storms to grow into global-scale storms,” said Hayne, a researcher at LASP and associate professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t even fully understand the basic physics of how dust storms start at the surface.”

Artist's depiction of a dust storm on Mars. (Credit: NASA)

Astronauts contend with a fierce dust storm in the 2015 film The Martian. (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Mars seen before, left, and during, right, a global dust storm in 2001. (Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS)

Dusty demise

Dust storms on Mars are something to behold.

Many begin as smaller storms that swirl around the ice caps at the planet’s north and south poles, usually during the second half of the Martian year. (A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days). Those storms can grow at a furious pace, pressing toward the equator until they cover millions of square miles and last for days.

The 2015 film The Martian starring Matt Damon featured one such apocalyptic storm that knocked over a satellite dish and tossed around astronauts. The reality is less cinematic. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, so dust storms on the Red Planet can’t generate much force. But they can still be trouble.

In 2018, for example, a global dust storm buried the solar panels on NASA’s Opportunity rover under a layer of dust. The rover died not long after.

“Even though the wind pressure may not be enough to knock over equipment, these dust grains can build up a lot of speed and pelt astronauts and their equipment,” Hayne said.

Hot spells

In the current study, Pieris and Hayne set their sights on two weather patterns that tend to occur every year on Mars known as “A” and “C” storms.

The team pored over observations of Mars from the Mars Climate Sounder instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter over eight Mars years (15 years on Earth). In particular, Pieris and Hayne looked for periods of unusual warmth—or weeks when more sunlight filtered through Mars’ thin atmosphere and baked the planet’s surface.

They discovered that roughly 68% of major storms on the planet were preceded by a sharp rise in temperatures at the surface. In other words, the planet heated up, then a few weeks later, conditions got dusty.

“It’s almost like Mars has to wait for the air to get clear enough to form a major dust storm,” Hayne said.

The team can’t prove that those balmy conditions actually cause the dust storms. But, Pieris said, similar phenomena trigger storms on Earth. During hot summers in Boulder, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, for example, warm air near the ground can rise through the atmosphere, often forming those towering, gray clouds that signal rain.

“When you heat up the surface, the layer of atmosphere right above it becomes buoyant, and it can rise, taking dust with it,” Pieris said.

She and Hayne are now gathering observations from more recent years on Mars to continue to explore these explosive weather patterns. Eventually, they’d like to get to the point where they can look at live data coming from the Red Planet and predict what could happen in the weeks ahead.

“This study is not the end all be all of predicting storms on Mars,” Pieris said. “But we hope it’s a step in the right direction.”

Dust storms on Mars could one day pose dangers to human astronauts, damaging equipment and burying solar panels. New research gets closer to predicting when extreme weather might erupt on the Red Planet.

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A dust storm spreads over the surface of Mars in 2018. (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)

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A dust storm spreads over the surface of Mars in 2018. (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder at AGU 2024: From Earth to space

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 10:19:10 +0000

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder at AGU 2024: From Earth to space Daniel William… Mon, 12/09/2024 - 03:19

From Dec. 9 to 13, tens of thousands of people from more than 100 countries will gather in Washington D.C. for the 2024 meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

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Google Maps for space? One grad student is making it happen

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:08:11 +0000

Google Maps for space? One grad student is making it happen Daniel William… Tue, 12/03/2024 - 13:08

Daniel Strain , Nicholas Goda

Dezell Turner slips on a set of sleek augmented reality goggles in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. Behind him stretches a floor-to-ceiling mural of space—a deep blue sky dotted with constellations and the cloudy shape of the Milky Way.

In his Microsoft HoloLens headset, however, Turner is experiencing a different kind of outer space.

Turner, a graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences and Smead Scholar at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, waives his hands in front of him and pinches his fingers. Inside the headset, which only he can see, curving red and yellow lines appear. They join two dots, one representing Earth and the other the moon. With a few swipes, the lines shift, transforming from a relatively simple arc to more complicated curls and loop-de-loops.

It looks like a more dizzying version of directions you might follow on your phone during a road trip.

“This is like a holographic Google Maps for planning space missions,” he said.

The new tool, which Turner developed working under advisor Jay McMahon, projects various paths a spacecraft could take to get to the moon through what scientists call “cislunar” space. He named the software ASTROMECH, a nod to a class of droids in the Star Wars franchise.

Turner’s work arrives as the moon is having a moment. NASA’s Artemis Program plans to land humans on the lunar surface sometime this decade. Other entities, including a growing number of private companies, have their eyes set on space. Turner hopes that his AR tool will help some of those groups plan out their missions—picking routes and weighing factors like speed versus fuel cost.

For the budding aerospace engineer, the project is a chance to make the technology from some of his favorite movies a reality. Picture the scene in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which a droid projects a holographic map that will lead the characters to the location of a missing hero.

“When R2D2 projects the map to Luke Skywalker, we’re creating a real-world version of that that’s hopefully just as intuitive to use,” Turner said.

Dezell Turner in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. (Credit: Dezell Turner)

According to ASTROMECH, this route from Earth to the moon would take a little over 15 days. The display also includes an estimate for delta-V, essentially how much fuel the spacecraft will need to burn. (Credit: Dezell Turner)

Miniature planetarium

Turner, who’s 24, has loved space for as long as he can remember. When he was 4 years old, his parents bought him a projector that displayed a star map on the ceiling of his bedroom. He spent so long staring at the projection that he memorized many of the constellations.

But space is a lot more complicated than movies or his bedroom planetarium might make it seem. In Star Wars, if Han Solo needs to get somewhere, he just points the Millennium Falcon in the right direction and goes. In reality, spacecraft leaving Earth’s orbit are caught in the push and pull between the planet and its moon.

“Your trajectories aren’t always going to be traditional shapes like ellipses and circles,” Turner said. “Spacecraft may take all sorts of weird paths, and that can become very mathematically complicated.”

In 1969, for example, Apollo 11 took a relatively direct route to the moon, arriving in an orbit close to the lunar surface in about three days. More recently, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, which launched in 2022 with no humans aboard, made a more circuitous pass. The mission’s Orion space capsule first circled the moon, using its gravity to slingshot roughly 40,000 miles out into space. That trip took five days.

Turner explained that some small aerospace companies may not have employees versed in those kinds of gravitational intricacies. ASTROMECH does the math for them.

“The ways in which Dezell is leveraging AR in designing ASTROMECH has the potential to make cislunar trajectory design much more understandable for most people in the industry,” said McMahon, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “This could be hugely beneficial for training new employees and increasing small companies' ability to operate spacecraft in cislunar space.”

Alternate routes available

Back in the aerospace lobby, Turner demonstrates how he can pinch and swipe to compare those different routes.

Currently, the tool only tabulates fairly simple trajectories, similar to the direct path Apollo 11 took to the moon. But Turner would like to eventually add in more complicated routes. They include ones that take advantage of “Lagrange points,” or special spots in space where gravitational forces allow spacecraft to, essentially, park. The tool also includes an estimate for what aerospace engineers call delta-V, a calculation that roughly captures how much fuel a spacecraft will need to burn making maneuvers. Do you want to get to the moon fast and spend a bit more money or take your time and save on fuel?

Turner has a lot more work to do before aerospace companies can begin using ASTROMECH. One day, he envisions laying out trajectories for undertaking journeys even deeper into the solar system.

For now, he’s happy to have space at his fingerprints—just like Rey gazing at R2D2’s map.

“Getting to wear the headset really makes my day, especially when I’ve been fighting bugs in my code,” Turner said. “Getting to play with holograms makes me feel like a little kid.”

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder graduate student Dezell Turner has borrowed inspiration from his favorite sci-fi films to design an augmented reality tool that could one day help aerospace companies plan their routes from Earth to the moon.

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Photo taken from the Orion spacecraft, which traveled to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis 1 mission in 2022. (Credit: NASA)

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Photo taken from the Orion spacecraft, which traveled to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis 1 mission. (Credit: NASA)

Introducing ‘UFO’ galaxies—the Milky Way’s dustier cousins

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:10:13 +0000

Introducing ‘UFO’ galaxies—the Milky Way’s dustier cousins Daniel William… Tue, 11/19/2024 - 11:10

Daniel Strain

Image of a bright-red UFO galaxy, upper-right corner, as taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Credit: Erica Nelson)

In a new study, a team of astrophysicists led by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder has set out to unravel the mysteries of UFOs—not the alien spacecraft, but a class of unusually large and red galaxies that researchers have nicknamed Ultra-red Flattened Objects, or UFOs for short.

The research shines a spotlight on some strange galaxies, said Justus Gibson, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder researchers first discovered UFO galaxies in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Now, Gibson and his colleagues think they know more about the galaxies’ inner workings.

The researchers explained that UFOs are odd cosmic ducks for various reasons. For starters, they reside near the limit of how far earlier space instruments, like the Hubble Space Telescope, could peer into the universe. But Hubble had completely missed them because these galaxies emit very little visible light.

The new study relies on observations from the Webb telescope, a pioneering spacecraft that launched in December 2021. Drawing on those images and computer simulations, the team reports that UFO galaxies seem to be similar in size and shape to the Milky Way. But these new galaxies are much dustier.

The team published its findings this October in The Astrophysical Journal.

“JWST allows us to see this type of galaxy that we never would have been able to see before,” Gibson said. “It tells us that maybe we didn't understand the universe as well as we thought.”

Images of the same region of space as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This bright-red UFO galaxy, circled, was almost entirely invisible in the Hubble observations. (Credit: Erica Nelson)

The universe is turning out to be more interesting than some scientists assumed, said study co-author Erica Nelson, who first discovered the UFO galaxies.

“They’re so visually striking,” said Nelson, assistant professor of astrophysics at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. “They’re enormous red discs that pop up in these images, and they were totally unexpected. They make you say: ‘What? How?’”

Hidden galaxies

Gibson noted that UFO galaxies look red because they emit very little visible light—most of the light that escapes these galaxies is infrared radiation, and what little visible light they emit is at the limit of what human eyes can see (red, in other words). As a result, the UFO galaxies were all but invisible to Hubble, which only records visible light. The Webb telescope, in contrast, collects infrared light, which means it’s well-suited to spotting these kinds of objects.

“Prior to the launch of James Webb, we thought we would find really, really far away galaxies,” Gibson said. “But we thought that closer to us, we already had a pretty good understanding of all the types of galaxies there are.”

In the new study, Gibson and his colleagues drew on observations from a collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). In all, the team identified 56 UFO galaxies in images from JADES.

They found a lot of dust.

Biting the dust

The researchers noted that all galaxies, and even Earth’s solar system, contain interplanetary dust, the remnants of dying stars that exploded a long time ago, shooting tiny particles of metal far into space. But the UFO galaxies contain a lot more dust than the Milky Way—enough dust to block about 50 times more light from beaming into space. It’s a bit like a sandstorm on Earth obscuring the sun.

The researchers also used computer simulations, or models, to understand how the galaxies are shaped. Gibson noted that galaxies can come in many shapes and sizes, from Frisbee-like discs to football shapes and spheres.

The team’s calculations suggest that UFO galaxies may be shaped like run-of-the-mill discs (think Milky Way).

“You have these big bad disks—like our home, the Milky Way—flying around space, completely invisible to us,” Nelson said.

How these galaxies got so dusty isn’t clear. Nelson said she hopes that by studying them, astrophysicists can learn how galaxies grow and form new stars over time. For now, the UFOs raise a lot more questions than answers.

“Why on Earth do these galaxies have so much more dust than all the other galaxies?” she said. “Got me.”

Other co-authors on the new study include researchers from the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, University of Massachusetts, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, European Space Agency, University of Melbourne, Sorbonne University, University of Hertfordshire, University of Arizona, The Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Santa Cruz and NRC Herzberg.

Deep in the universe lurk a population of mysterious, red galaxies that, until recently, were all but invisible to scientists. Now, astrophysicists at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder have drawn on new observations to learn more about these objects.

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Life in space from a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumna who has been there

Megan Maneval — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 20:08:05 +0000

Life in space from a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumna who has been there Megan Maneval Thu, 11/14/2024 - 13:08

College of Engineering and Applied Science

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumna Sarah Gillis is a lead space operations engineer and astronaut trainer at SpaceX with literal out-of-this-world experience.

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶriosity: Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars?

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:47:49 +0000

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶriosity: Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars? Daniel William… Wed, 11/13/2024 - 13:47

Daniel Strain

In ŷ��ڱ��Ƶriosity, experts across the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Katya Arquilla, assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, looks into the question: “Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars?”

Previously in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶriosity

What causes the runner’s high?

In June, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded the International Space Station (ISS), expecting a week-long stay in orbit. Now, they won’t return to Earth until February after a series of technical issues plagued the Boeing Starliner space capsule they rode into space on.

If spending eight months on the ISS, which measures just 5,000 square feet, sounds like a recipe for frayed nerves, it may very well be. That’s according to Arquilla, an engineer who has studied how long space journeys can affect the mental health of humans.

“On long-duration space missions, there are many stressors that create the potential for negative mental health effects,” she said. “From data taken in research facilities in extreme environments on Earth, like Antarctica, we have seen symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.”

A future mission to Mars, however, could be a lot more than eight months, potentially as much as three years. Which raises the question: Can humans handle that much time in space?

Arquilla thinks so, but there are caveats.

“It will be a big challenge,” she said. “There’s a lot we don’t know because we haven’t sent people to Mars before. They won’t be able to look down and see the Earth the way they can on the International Space Station.”

In previous research, Arquilla and her colleagues explored the mental health consequences of that kind of isolation through an unlikely event here on Earth—the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katya Arquilla

In 2020, millions of Americans were suddenly cooped up in their homes with the threat of a major disease hanging over their heads. The researchers conducted a survey and observed that people with military training or other experience in stressful environments tended to be more productive during the pandemic than others. But those experienced individuals didn’t appear to maintain their mental health better than less experienced people.

Arquilla noted that simply being aware of your own body, and knowing when stress sets in, can help. She has partnered with Laura Devendorf, a researcher at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s ATLAS Institute, to assist people in doing that kind of monitoring. The team integrated sensors into comfortable textiles that track electrocardiogram (ECG) signals coming from wearers’ hearts.

“Maybe I'm an astronaut on a mission and I'm tracking my own signals, and I see that my heartrate starts to go up,” Arquilla said. “I could decide based on that that I should take a break for a couple of hours.”

This research won’t just help astronauts. Arquilla is also exploring how similar technologies could give people on the ground tools to detect and manage symptoms of mental health changes in high-stress environments. That might include wilderness expeditions, remote research facilities and military deployments.

She’s glad to see people talking more about mental health, both on Earth and in space.

“We all, after the pandemic, understand the importance of mental health a lot more than we did maybe 10 years ago,” she said. “Being able to recognize that it's okay to not feel at 100% all the time, and being able to give people the tools they need to articulate what is wrong, is really important.”

As humans spend longer and longer in space, the mental health of astronauts will become increasingly important, says aerospace engineer Katya Arquilla. Her research could help people in orbit and on the ground.

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Engineers transform smartphones into instruments for studying space

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:49:46 +0000

Engineers transform smartphones into instruments for studying space Daniel William… Wed, 11/13/2024 - 11:49

Daniel Strain

That ordinary smartphone in your pocket could be a powerful tool for investigating outer space.

In a new study, researchers at Google and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder have transformed millions of Android phones across the globe into a fleet of nimble scientific instruments—generating one of the most detailed maps to date of the uppermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

The group’s findings, published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature, might help to improve the accuracy of GPS technology worldwide several-fold. The research was led by Brian Williams of Google Research and included Jade Morton, professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

“These phones can literally fit in your palm,” Morton said. “But through crowdsourcing, we can use them to change the way we understand the space environment.”

She and her colleagues used the GPS sensors that come standard in every smartphone to collect data on how Earth’s atmosphere warped signals coming from satellites. In the process, they were able to view phenomena in the atmosphere, such as blobs high above the planet known as “plasma bubbles,” in never-before-seen detail.

The group released its data publicly so that anyone can watch how the atmosphere swirled and shifted over about eight months.

“Collaboration is central to scientific progress and to our scientific research at Google,” said Lizzie Dorfman, product lead for Science AI in Google Research. “Dr. Morton’s expertise was essential to this research, and it has been an absolute pleasure working with her as a visiting researcher and collaborator.”

Eye on the ionosphere

The study puts new focus on the ionosphere, a wispy layer of the atmosphere that stretches more than 350 miles above Earth’s surface.

It’s a volatile arena: Here, rays from the sun constantly beat down on the atmosphere, splitting its molecules and atoms into a soupy mix of charged particles—what scientists call a plasma. It also never stays still.

Jade Morton, holding a smartphone, poses on the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder campus next to a station for monitoring Earth's upper atmosphere. (Credit: Jade Morton)

Map generated from 10 minutes of cellphone data showing the concentration of charged particles overlying different parts of the world. (Credit: Google)

“At 2 o'clock in afternoon, there are a lot more charged particles in the ionosphere because the sun is at its strongest,” Morton said. “But at night, the sun is on the other side of the planet, so we have very few charged particles.”

That fluctuation can play havoc with GPS technology.

Morton explained that the technology works through a sort of stopwatch in space: Satellites thousands of miles from Earth first beam radio waves to the planet. Your phone then pinpoints your location by measuring how long it takes those signals to reach the ground.

Scientists try to account for how the ionosphere might shift that timing by mapping this region of space using radar dishes on the ground. Currently, however, they can only observe about 14% of the ionosphere at any one time. As a result, GPS devices may miss your exact location by anywhere from a few to several dozen feet.

“There are a lot of applications that require a lot of accuracy—for example, landing aircraft,” Morton said.

Bubbling up

In the current study, the researchers landed on an unusual idea: Rather than rely on expensive radar dishes, they could map the ionosphere using a suite of sensors that already existed in every country on Earth: Android phones.

The ionosphere maps are created using aggregated measurements of the radio signals between satellites and the receivers in some Android devices. Privacy protections ensure these measurements do not identify any contributing individual devices.

In particular, the group used the phones to track in real time how the ionosphere stretches out radio waves coming from satellites.

The team reported that, on its own, this worldwide fleet could observe roughly 21% of the ionosphere—potentially doubling the accuracy of GPS devices worldwide.

“Millions of phones together can do a much better job of monitoring the atmosphere than our ground network,” Morton said.

The group’s maps also capture the ionosphere in brilliant detail.

In May 2024, for example, a powerful solar storm struck Earth just as the group’s cell phones were looking up. In the hours that followed, huge regions of atmosphere, or “plasma bubbles,” containing low concentrations of charged particles formed above parts of South America. Those bubbles then rose through the ionosphere like wax in a lava lamp.

Morton, for her part, says the study shows the untapped potential of the everyday technologies that many people take for granted.

“I have spent my lifetime building dedicated instruments to do scientific research,” Morton said. “But as technology advances in our society, we see all these sensors at our disposal that have a lot more power than we ever imagined.”

Millions of Android phones across the globe have helped to capture the swirls and bubbles in Earth's atmosphere high above the surface in incredible detail.

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Credit: NASA

Space weather applications for all

Megan Maneval — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 19:03:14 +0000

Space weather applications for all Megan Maneval Fri, 11/08/2024 - 12:03

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

The Data Systems group collaborates to create user-friendly applications designed to make space weather data accessible to all, empowering users to explore the latest space weather developments from their browsers.

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Doctoral student working to keep astronauts safer on the moon

Megan Maneval — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 18:49:48 +0000

Doctoral student working to keep astronauts safer on the moon Megan Maneval Tue, 11/05/2024 - 11:49

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Amrita Singh is studying lunar dust to answer important health and technology questions for future moon missions.

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Space

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