Asteroid Aspirations
August 1, 2006A recent grant from NASA will enable the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arkansas to continue its work creating missions to asteroids and exploring the possibilities and chemistry of water on Mars as part of the nation’s space effort.
The center received a grant of $1 million from NASA for its operations.
“We are very grateful to the university and to our congressional delegates for making this possible,” said Derek Sears, director of the center and University Professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
The present NASA award will support the work of several University of Arkansas faculty, students and their collaborators. One of these projects concerns the development of a sample collector for the Hera near-Earth asteroid sample return mission that the center has proposed to NASA.
The Hera spacecraft will carry a collector designed, developed and built at the University of Arkansas by Sears, engineering professor Larry Roe, and chemistry and biochemistry professor Robert Gawley, as well as space center graduate Melissa Franzen, who was recently the first student to graduate with a doctorate from the new space and planetary sciences program. Physics professor Claud Lacy and his student, Kathy Geitzen, are studying potential target asteroids for Hera using ground-based astronomy.
In addition to supporting space and planetary research at Arkansas, these new funds will support the education programs of the space center at the graduate and undergraduate level. The space center is about to start a new program to engage undergraduate honors students in space and planetary research.
The public face of the space center is provided by numerous outreach efforts, public lectures, summer teacher’s workshops, a monthly newsletter called Space Notes and a popular magazine called Meteorite. The space center is also working with the physics department to reopen the university’s planetarium, hopefully sometime this fall.
“We hope that the rich and varied programs of the space center will enrich the lives of faculty and students at the university, and bring something to the citizens of the state,” said Rick Ulrich, the new deputy director of the space center. “Furthermore, we aim to create a new center of excellence for the nation’s space exploration efforts – a center located in the nation’s heartland that is focused on the analysis of returned samples from space.”
The center has a grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation that supports the laboratory for space simulations, which houses the largest environmental chamber in a university setting. These funds support the research of professors Sears, Ulrich and Roe and their students, Julie Chittenden, Katie Bryson, Lisa Billingsley and Brendon Chastain, on the behavior of water on and below the surface of Mars, and recently these measurements were extended to include the behavior of methane, a gas that can be produced by certain living organisms and recently has been detected in the Martian atmosphere.
Source: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
-
Searching for planets in clouds of dust
Feb 10, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
1
-
Secrets of immune response illuminated in new study
Feb 09, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
0
-
Deconstructing a mystery: What caused Snowmaggedon?
Feb 09, 2012 |
3.8 / 5 (4) |
1
-
Research provides octagonal window of opportunity for carbon capture
Feb 08, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
5
-
Unusual alliances enable movement
Feb 08, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Never ending outer space.....
26 minutes ago
-
Neutron Star fragments?
2 hours ago
-
stationary or not?
6 hours ago
-
Scale of the Universe
Feb 10, 2012
-
Titan's lack of impact craters
Feb 09, 2012
-
Real pictures of black hole eating a star?
Feb 08, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - General Astronomy
More news stories
Europe stakes billion-dollar bet on new rocket
A pencil-slim rocket is scheduled to lift into space from South America on Monday, carrying a billion-dollar bet that Europe can grab a juicy slice of the market to place satellites in low orbit.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
12 hours ago |
3.5 / 5 (2) |
0
Political leaders play key role in how worried Americans are by climate change: study
More than extreme weather events and the work of scientists, it is national political leaders who influence how much Americans worry about the threat of climate change, new research finds.
Feb 06, 2012 |
5 / 5 (6) |
72
NASA budget will axe Mars deal with Europe: scientists
US President Barack Obama's budget proposal to be submitted next week for 2013 will cut NASA's budget by 20 percent and eliminate a major partnership with Europe on Mars exploration, scientists said Thursday.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Feb 10, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
47
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Feb 10, 2012 |
5 / 5 (8) |
10
|
Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...
GPS court ruling leaves US phone tracking unclear
A US Supreme Court decision requiring a warrant to place a GPS device on the car of a criminal suspect leaves unresolved the bigger issue of police tracking using mobile phones, legal experts say.
Europeans protest controversial Internet pact
Tens of thousands of people marched in protests in more than a dozen European cities Saturday against a controversial anti-online piracy pact that critics say could curtail Internet freedom.
Study finds that anti-diabetic medication can prevent the long-term effects of maternal obesity
In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting, in Dallas, Texas, researchers will report findings that show that short therapy with the anti-diabetic medication ...
Netflix settlement trims 14 pct off 4Q earnings
(AP) -- Netflix pressed the rewind button on its fourth-quarter earnings after settling allegations that the video subscription service violated a consumer-privacy law.
Steroid injections prove effective in treatment of lumbar disc herniations
The use of epidural steroid injections may be a more efficient treatment option for lumbar disc herniations, according to research presented today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day in ...