Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research

Hanspeter Schaub is being recognized by the American Astronautical Society. AAS is honoring Schaub as the 2024 Dirk Brouwer Award for "transformational work in the emerging field of charged spacecraft formation flight and control and for sustained and outstanding contributions to astrodynamics research, application, and teaching." Schaub is a professor...

Delores Knipp was interviewed for a feature article in the Washington Post. Knipp, a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is an expert on solar wind-geospace coupling and space weather and has written extensively about historic solar storms. The Washington Post article focuses...

This year, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) celebrates its 75th anniversary—marking 75 years of CU Boulder’s exploration of space, from the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere to the wide expanse of interstellar space. The university is just getting started. In the year ahead, scientists and engineers from across...

The space economy is booming, and the University of Colorado Boulder is at the forefront of a major federal funding initiative aimed at expanding science and engineering knowledge and workforce development for projects centered on operations Beyond Geostationary Orbit (xGEO) and Space Domain Awareness (SDA). Leading this endeavor is Marcus...

A team of University of Colorado Boulder researchers is leading a major military-oriented project for 5G wireless security. The National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program has awarded CU Boulder $5 million for “GHOST: 5G Hidden Operations through Securing Traffic.” The goal of the work is...

Natasha Bosanac has been selected as the 2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Rocky Mountain Section Young Professional Engineer of the Year for her "significant impact in the field of space exploration and astrodynamics." Bosanac is an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace...

Jay McMahon's work on soft robots for space exploration and mining is being highlighted by IEEE Spectrum. McMahon, an associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is developing Area-of-Effect Softbots (AoES) for asteroid proximity operations that can use electro-adhesion, solar radiation, or van der...

The University of Colorado Boulder is leading a major Air Force project to track objects orbiting near the moon. The Air Force Research Laboratory is awarding a Space University Research Initiative worth up to $5 million over five years to the...

Keep an eye on the skies. Researchers from CU Boulder and NASA have completed a census of hundreds of large asteroids orbiting near Earth—gauging which ones could come precariously close to our planet over the next thousand years. The researchers identified at least 20 asteroids that scientists may want to...

On Feb. 10, 2009, disaster struck hundreds of miles above the Siberian Peninsula. That evening, a defunct Russian satellite orbiting Earth crashed into a communications satellite called Iridium 33 moving at a speed of thousands of miles per hour. Both spacecraft erupted into a rain of shrapnel, sending more than...