A new laboratory for a plasma wind tunnel is taking shape at the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. The project, the vision of Assistant Professor Hisham Ali, will allow his team to study the conditions of atmospheric reentry, when a spacecraft returning to Earth can hit speeds of Mach 30.

A new program is helping Native American undergraduate students delve into astrophysics and more fully participate in scientific research that frequently happens on Indigenous lands. The NSF-supported program is a partnership between CU Boulder and Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

As part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), CU Boulder postdoc Joseph Simon is searching for a phenomenon known as the “gravitational wave background”: giant ripples in space and time that owe their origins in part to supermassive black holes.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will soon get a new “sidekick”—a small but nimble satellite called MANTIS, which will be designed and built at LASP. Like that undersea animal, the spacecraft (about the size of a toaster oven) will be able to observe the night sky in the full range of UV light.

Allie Anderson and Torin Clark at CU Boulder are conducting research into how humans and artificial intelligence systems work together. The pair are part of a multi-university research team commissioned by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study trust in autonomous systems—an important and complex problem.

“It was truly inspiring to speak with the next generation of space scientists and engineers at CU Boulder," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "The power of education at learning institutions like CU Boulder provide the necessary tools to make big dreams a reality and keep our nation a global leader in space exploration and innovation.”

Since its genesis, LASP has been instrumental in positioning the university as a hub for the state’s aerospace and defense economy, the largest per capita in the nation. This leadership will continue this week, when representatives from LASP and other CU affiliates participate in the 38th annual Space Symposium.

Space research first began at CU Boulder in 1948, when an Air Force research lab contracted with the Department of Physics to study the Sun by launching instruments mounted on surplus WWII rockets. Fast forward to the present, and LASP, which has grown to about 700 employees, is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

A multi-university research team, including engineers and physicists from CU Boulder and NIST, will build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space. The new Quantum Pathways Institute is led by the University of Texas at Austin.

The student team's Drone Recharging Operational Payload System (DROPS) received top honors at SciTech. The autonomous cargo delivery system, designed for uncrewed aerial vehicles, is capable of dropping off and picking up drone cargo without the need for human intervention.