Space

The reaches of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder research

Megan Maneval — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:53:50 +0000

The reaches of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder research Megan Maneval Thu, 11/13/2025 - 14:53

Coloradan

�鶹��Ѱ��researchers across space science, bioengineering and nanomaterials are turning "what if" questions into transformative discoveries.

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Solar physicist explains science behind colorful aurora borealis over the US

Daniel William Strain — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 18:58:29 +0000

Solar physicist explains science behind colorful aurora borealis over the US Daniel William… Thu, 11/13/2025 - 11:58

Daniel Strain , Nicholas Goda , Casey Bauer

The aurora shines above Coot Lake in Longmont, Colorado, in November 2025. (Credit: Ryan French)

Late on Friday, Nov. 7, Ryan French was flying from Denver to Chicago when he saw something surprising from his window seat: glowing green and purple lights in the skies high above the Midwest.

For French, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, the event was a rare opportunity to witness the phenomena he studies. He’s a solar physicist who studies the sun’s volatile nature—dynamics that can, under certain circumstances, create brilliant light shows in Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena are called the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

The scientist’s flight was a teaser for things to come: This week, people across the United States saw the aurora as far south as parts of Florida and Texas, and more displays may be in store in the nights to come.

French writes about these events for non-specialist audiences, and his book “Space Hazards” is coming out in December.

He gives his take on what causes this kind of phenomenal light show, and provides tips for how Coloradans might catch these lights in the sky.

Ryan French speaks in front of an image of the surface of the sun at the Fiske Planetarium at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. (Credit: Ryan French)

French and his wife gaze at the aurora in Colorado in May 2024. (Credit: Ryan French)

The aurora above Coot Lake in November 2025. (Credit: Ryan French)

What causes the aurora?

Essentially, you have an eruption of stuff from the sun. This is called a coronal mass ejection. It’s an ejection of mass from the sun’s corona, which is the word we use for the sun’s atmosphere.

It can take several days for the coronal mass ejection to reach Earth, but when it does, it slams into Earth's magnetic field and high energy particles will enter our magnetic field. They will then slide down towards the North and South Poles, and those particles will collide with the air in our atmosphere and cause the atmosphere to glow.

The different colors you see in the aurora are caused by different elements at different heights being smacked by these high energy particles from space.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the aurora this far south in recent years—there was a major solar storm in May 2024. Why is that?

The sun follows an 11-year cycle of increasing and decreasing solar activity. We call this the solar cycle. At the peak of this cycle, where we are now, there are lots of sunspots on the sun. These produce a lot of solar flares and eruptions that head towards Earth.

At the bottom of this cycle, the sun doesn't really do anything for years at a time. After the next year or two, we're going to have an absence of major events on the sun for a few years.

Can these events pose a danger to humans?

The largest events from the sun can disrupt things like power grids and satellite navigation. But this week’s event was not strong enough that anyone at home needs to be concerned. But, if you work in satellite operations, you will be taking extra steps to the monitor the positioning of your spacecraft.

How are scientists trying to reduce those risks?

We are observing the sun 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If there is a solar flare or an eruption from the sun, there are alerts that are sent out. Industries will look at these forecasts and take necessary actions to try and minimize the risks.

How can people see the aurora?

During active periods of the aurora, my advice is to head out, face north and get away from streetlights. Maybe you'll be able to see some greens and reds with your eye. But if you can't, just take out your phone, set a long exposure, take the photograph, and you'll see those colors beginning to pop.

Why are phones better at seeing the aurora than human eyes?

The human eye is not great at seeing in the dark. When your eyes adjust at nighttime, your color perception isn't fantastic, but a camera will pick up those colors that your eye cannot.

Why do you like seeing the aurora so much?

I am a solar astrophysicist, so I research the sun and the origins of these events. To see firsthand the influence of something 93 million miles away happening above our heads is quite striking. The aurora sends the message that Earth is not just an isolated bubble in space, but we live in a solar system. We live next to a star.

I've seen the aurora many times now, and every time it's different. The colors, the shapes, they all vary from time to time.

People in Colorado and across the United States saw glowing skies this week as a powerful solar storm shook Earth's atmosphere.

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Student-built rocket flies into the stratosphere

Megan Maneval — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 17:01:53 +0000

Student-built rocket flies into the stratosphere Megan Maneval Tue, 11/11/2025 - 10:01

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

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students who are part of the Sounding Rocket Lab designed and launched a rocket that soared to 90,000 feet in altitude.

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Coronal mass ejections at the dawn of the solar system

Megan Maneval — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 17:42:25 +0000

Coronal mass ejections at the dawn of the solar system Megan Maneval Fri, 11/07/2025 - 10:42

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

International researchers, including several from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's LASP, have reported the first evidence of a coronal mass ejection carrying both hot and cool plasma from a young star—suggesting such ejections from the early sun may have affected the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere and the emergence and evolution of life on Earth.

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Chemists find clues to the origins of buckyballs in space

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 19:44:28 +0000

Chemists find clues to the origins of buckyballs in space Daniel William… Mon, 11/03/2025 - 12:44

Daniel Strain

Image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of the so-called "Pillars of Creation," a region in the Eagle Nebula where clouds of gas and dust are collapsing to form new stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Far from Earth, in the vast expanses of space between stars, exists a treasure trove of carbon. There, in what scientists call the “interstellar medium,” you can find a wide range of organic molecules—from honeycomblike polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to spheres of carbon shaped like soccer balls.

In a new study, an international team of researchers led by scientists at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder have used experiments on Earth to recreate the chemistry deep in space. The group’s results may have uncovered key steps in the processes that shape these organic molecules over time.

Jordy Bouwman

The molecule buckminsterfullerene, shown here, earned its name because it resembles Richard Buckminster Fuller's architectural design for the geodesic dome. (Credit: CC image via Wikimedia commons)

The findings could reveal information about the building blocks that once formed Earth’s solar system, said Jordy Bouwman, lead author of the study. Billions of years ago, similar clouds of matter condensed to form the seeds of what would become our own sun and its planets.

“We’re all made of carbon, so it’s really important to know how carbon in the universe gets transformed on its way to being incorporated in a planetary system like our own solar system,” said Bouwman, an assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry and scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

The research, published recently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, sheds light on the formation of a class of molecules called fullerenes.

Fullerenes are made up of carbon atoms organized in the shape of a closed cage. The most famous example is buckminsterfullerene, or the buckyball, which gets its name from famed futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller. These molecules include 60 carbon atoms in the shape of a sphere and bear a striking resemblance to a FIFA regulation soccer ball.

Fullerenes, including buckyballs, float freely in the interstellar medium. But scientists have long struggled to explain where they come from and how they are formed.

The new study suggests that radiation in space may help to transform PAHs into fullerenes.

“This gives us a hint that the buckyballs that we find in space may be connected to these large aromatic molecules that are also abundant,” Bouwman said.

Space chemistry, on Earth

The group simulated the chemistry in space by studying two small PAH molecules called anthracene and phenanthrene.

PAHs are made up of carbon atoms arranged in a series of hexagons, not unlike a honeycomb. They’re abundant on Earth where you can find them in smoke, soot and other charred materials.

“If you put your steak on the grill for too long, and it gets black, that contains PAHs,” Bouwman said. “They’re a nasty byproduct of combustion.”

First, the researchers bombarded the two PAHs with a beam of electrons. It’s similar to what happens when radiation in space interacts with molecules in the interstellar medium.

This bombardment transformed the PAHs into new, charged organic molecules. The researchers then fed the products into an ion trap apparatus at a scientific facility called the Free Electron Lasers for Infrared eXperiments at HFML-FELIX. This one-of-a-kind national research facility is located in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and includes several lasers that spread across a large basement room. Using those lasers, the researchers were able to precisely probe the structure of their new molecules.

They were surprised when they saw the results.

Graphic showing how anthracene, top left, and phenanthrene, bottom right, lose one or two hydrogen atoms to transform into molecules containing carbon atoms in the shape of both hexagons and pentagons. (Credit: Patch et al. 2025, J. Am. Chem. Soc.)

Making buckyballs

Bouwman explained that when the team hit anthracene and phenanthrene with electrons, the molecules lost one or two of their hydrogen atoms.

In the process, they also radically changed their structures, like disassembling a Lego castle and building a new structure. Instead of just including hexagons, the resulting products now carried carbon atoms arranged in the shape of both hexagons and pentagons.

That radical reaction had never been seen before, Bouwman said. Whether these kinds of pentagon-bearing molecules are also common in space isn’t clear.

“That was a very surprising result—that just by kicking off a hydrogen atom or two, the entire molecule completely rearranged,” said Sandra Brünken, a co-author of the study, associate professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands and group leader at FELIX.

The results were eye-opening, in part because those kinds of molecules are also really easy to fold up. (Just picture a soccer ball, which is made up of a mix of both hexagons and pentagons).

In other words, these pentagon-bearing molecules may be the missing link for converting common PAHs into buckyballs and other fullerenes.

Bouwman and Brünken hope that astrophysicists will take note. Scientists could use the team’s findings to see if similar pentagon-bearing molecules exist deep in space using tools like the James Webb Space Telescope—the most powerful telescope ever launched.

“You can take our results from the laboratory, and then use them as a fingerprint to look for the same signatures in space,” Brünken said.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder co-authors of the new study include LASP graduate students Madison Patch and Rory McClish. Other co-authors include scientists at Radboud University; Leiden University in the Netherlands; Paris-East Créteil University in France; and the University of Maryland College Park.

A new study led by space chemist Jordy Bouwman may reveal a missing link in how certain organic molecules form in outer space. They include buckminsterfullerine, sometimes known as the "buckyball," a molecule that bears a striking resemblance to a soccer ball.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder delivers impactful research and creative work, despite federal funding uncertainty

Megan Maneval — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:04:13 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder delivers impactful research and creative work, despite federal funding uncertainty Megan Maneval Fri, 10/31/2025 - 11:04

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researchers continued to deliver meaningful, positive outcomes in the university's public research mission through strong results in fiscal year 2024–25. Highlights of their work include big innovations in quantum technology, improving our understanding of space weather, and enhancing environmental resiliency.

The pace of growth in research funding at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder tapered in the new year due to cuts and funding pauses by federal agencies, including the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NASA. At $766.7 million, the newly released sponsored research funding numbers for �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder reflect a 3.3% increase over the prior year.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder drives $5B boost to Colorado's economy

“The research, scholarship and creative work produced by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder faculty, researchers and students directly impacts people’s lives,” said Massimo Ruzzene, senior vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes. “We are committed to advocating for the support needed to drive advances that strengthen our national security, enhance peoples’ health, ensure our nation’s continued leadership in scholarship and innovation, and spark economic development in Colorado and beyond.”

The bulk of the research funding, or 69%, comes from federal agencies, including NASA, the NSF, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIH, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. The state of Colorado contributed $15 million of the total. Nonprofits and international organizations supported �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder research and creative work to the tune of $102 million; industry accounted for $31 million; and other universities provided $47 million of the funding.

Here are a few research program highlights from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

Innovating at a quantum scale

The NSF invested $20 million in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to launch a facility known as the National Quantum Nanofab. In this facility, Colorado researchers and quantum specialists from industry and research institutions around the country will design and build devices that tap into the world of the tiny packets of energy that make up light.

Principal Investigator Scott Diddams, professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, alongside a team of physicists and engineers, leads the work in this makerspace.

Improving understanding of space weather

A team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) has received $2 million to develop a concept study for a NASA mission that will investigate how Earth’s lower atmosphere influences the upper atmosphere. The results will improve and expand our understanding of the space weather system surrounding our planet.

The group, which is led by LASP researcher Aimee Merkel, is one of three selected by NASA to develop detailed proposals for the agency’s DYNAMIC (Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling) mission.

Helping communities adapt to climate change

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) has received a new five-year, $1.4 million cooperative agreement to continue hosting the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Since its founding in 2018, the center provides actionable science to help communities, ecosystems and economies in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska adapt to climate change.

Led by William Travis, associate professor of geography, the center advances the development and delivery of actionable science to help fish, wildlife, water, land and people in the North Central region adapt to a changing environment.

Learn more about NC CASC here.

Pairing humans and AI to help students learn

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder joined six other teams that make up the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI). The institute's goal is to double the rate of middle school math learning within five years, focusing on students from low-income backgrounds.

Professors Sidney D'Mello and Tamara Sumner of the Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science join professors Peter Foltz, Jennifer Jacobs and Jeffrey Bush of the Institute of Cognitive Science in leading the project team. �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's project is the Hybrid Human-AI Tutoring (HAT) platform.

Learn more about LEVI and HAT.

Creating a Band-Aid for the heart

In the quest to develop lifelike materials to replace and repair human body parts, scientists face a formidable challenge: Real tissues are often both strong and stretchable and vary in shape and size. A �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder-led team, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, has taken a critical step toward cracking that code:

They’ve developed a new way to 3D print material that is at once elastic enough to withstand a heart’s persistent beating, tough enough to endure the crushing load placed on joints, and easily shapable to fit a patient’s unique defects.

A significant amount of sponsored research funding is directed to programs and researchers with unique expertise, such as biotechnology and aerospace, which stimulates industry.

Sponsored research funding from federal, state, international and foundation entities targets specific projects to advance research in laboratories and in the field. Research funding also helps pay for research-related capital improvements, scientific equipment, travel and salaries for research and support staff and student assistantships. �鶹��Ѱ��cannot divert this funding to non-research-related expenses.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researchers continued to deliver meaningful, positive outcomes in the university's public research mission through strong results in fiscal year 2024–25.

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Why space exploration matters: Planetary scientist reflects on lessons learned from Mars, Venus and beyond

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:46:56 +0000

Why space exploration matters: Planetary scientist reflects on lessons learned from Mars, Venus and beyond Daniel William… Mon, 09/29/2025 - 15:46

Daniel Strain

Over billions of years, streams of charged particles from the sun stripped away much of Mars' atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)

Shannon Curry remembers the first time she saw the moon up close.

She was an undergraduate at Tufts University doing research in Oracle, Arizona, and got the chance to see the moon through a high-powered telescope. Curry had long been interested in space. But now, she could see the ridges of individual craters on the lunar surface in startling detail, making the moon real for her in a way it hadn’t been before.

“I think I hogged the telescope for 20 minutes,” said Curry, today a professor whose research is out of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the �鶹��Ѱ��. “I was almost in tears.”

Now, Curry, who joined the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder faculty in 2024, is hoping to bring those same kinds of moments of discovery to a new generation of scientists.

Shannon Curry

MAVEN detected a series of auroras, in purple, above Mars during the solar storms of May 2024. (Credit: NASA/University of Colorado/LASP)

In 2022, NASA named Curry the new principal investigator for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission—at 39 she was the youngest person to lead a planetary science mission of this scale in the space agency’s history.

The MAVEN spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2014 to solve a long-running mystery: Where did the planet’s atmosphere go? Today, Mars harbors only a wispy atmosphere, roughly 100 times thinner than the gases around Earth.

Curry said that space missions like MAVEN can help humans answer important questions about our place in the universe. The spacecraft is also laying important groundwork that could one day keep astronauts safe as they explore the surface of Mars. She sees MAVEN as a tool for training students and early-career scientists who will make up the “Artemis generation” in how to manage a complex mission in space—a skill that may be dying out in the United States.

In an era when the future of NASA funding is uncertain, Curry believes that humanity must continue to look to the stars for inspiration.

“Are there other species like us? Are there other planets like us?” said Curry, an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “Understanding other atmospheres is a fundamental piece of understanding our own origins.”

Lottery ticket

For Curry, exploring the story of other planets also means exploring Earth’s own story.

Three billion years ago, Mars looked a lot like our planet. Precipitation in the form of snow or rain fell from the sky, feeding a vast network of channels that emptied into massive lakes. Today, that water has mostly disappeared. Venus, meanwhile, also started off a lot like Earth. Today, it’s choked by thick clouds of carbon dioxide, and temperatures at the surface hit 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The planetary scientist has long wanted to know why the three worlds went down very different paths.

“You can think of Earth as this super lotto ticket. We have this incredible set of conditions that have been critical for life,” Curry said. “We’re not quite sure why Mars and Venus, which formed at the same time with similar atmospheres, went in totally different directions.”

In Mars’ case, several years of MAVEN data revealed that streams of charged particles coming from the sun had slowly stripped away the gases around the planet—leaving it with an atmosphere too thin to maintain water at the surface.

Those findings, however, have left scientists with more questions than answers, Curry said.

Violet Shirley, for example, began working with Curry on the MAVEN mission when she was an undergraduate student at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder studying interdisciplinary astronomy. Shirley uses several instruments on the spacecraft to look not at Mars, but at the sun. In particular, she’s studying how the sun ejects massive storms, known as coronal mass ejections, deep into space.

Her research matters a lot for humanity’s dreams of one day visiting Mars.

In May 2024, the sun let loose one of the largest coronal mass ejections that scientists had seen in decades, which collided directly with Mars’ atmosphere several days later. If any humans had been standing on the planet’s surface at the time, they would have been hit by radiation equal to 30 chest X-rays—a potentially harmful dose.

To protect future Mars astronauts, Shirley said, scientists need to understand how the planet’s thin atmosphere reacts to the sun’s outbursts.

“If we’re going to be sending people to Mars, and there’s a solar storm, space agencies will need to know whether to get those astronauts off the surface or get so far underground that it won’t hurt them,” said Shirley, who graduated in May 2025.

Artist's depiction of the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars. (Credit: NASA)

Breath of fresh air

Shirley’s research also shows what budding scientists can gain from working on real space missions.

MAVEN isn’t a simple apparatus. The spacecraft measures more than 11-feet-tall and includes nine scientific instruments. Maneuvering the spacecraft, analyzing its data and working through obstacles when they arise requires juggling priorities across the country and globe. Curry worries, however, that the skills needed to successfully operate such missions could be disappearing in the United States.

“We have this incredible wealth of knowledge in planetary science, but there's a generational gap,” Curry said. “We haven't really invested in making sure we transfer that knowledge to the next generation.”

Violet Shirley presents her MAVEN findings at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. (Credit: Violet Shirley)

She’s using her time as MAVEN’s lead scientist to pass on that knowledge to early-career researchers. Her goal dovetails with LASP’s long-running efforts to give students at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder hands-on experience with space missions—skills that come in handy when students apply for jobs at NASA, universities or private aerospace companies.

Those students include Rhys Hanson. He’s an undergraduate in his third year at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder studying astrophysics and aerospace engineering sciences. Hanson helps to develop computer simulations, or models, that predict conditions in Mars’ upper atmosphere—something like weather forecasts for the Red Planet. NASA could one day use these kinds of forecasts to keep satellites in orbit around Mars for longer.

“What’s really interesting to me is that planetary atmospheres can be so unique,” Hanson said. “Every planetary atmosphere in our solar system is different from every other atmosphere. Earth has this mix of gases that we can breathe, but Venus is an awful wasteland. Some moons have methane atmospheres.”

Looking to the stars

The United States’ long legacy in exploring the fringes of space, however, is under threat today, Curry said.

In its proposed budget for 2026, the White House recommended steep cuts to NASA, and proposed canceling funding for the MAVEN mission, among several others, entirely.

If implemented, these proposals could have severe impacts on the economy. Federal funding fuels the nation’s aerospace and defense industry, which employs around 2.2 million people. At LASP alone, NASA funding employs around 250 undergraduate and 100 graduate students every year.

Curry also sees space exploration as an important part of the American identity—one that has brought together people from different backgrounds for generations. She hopes that young people will continue to have the chance for decades to come to peer through telescopes and dream of what’s possible.

“On a fundamental level, exploration has been the thing that has set humanity apart in so many ways and can also unite us in so many ways—we can harness our intellectual capacity and do things no one ever thought possible when we do it together,” Curry said.

Planetary scientist Shannon Curry has spent her career exploring why Earth, Mars and Venus look so different today. Her findings may shape how scientists search for life in other worlds, and could help keep astronauts safe as they venture into space.

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Space instrument launches to collect stardust

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:38:45 +0000

Space instrument launches to collect stardust Daniel William… Mon, 09/22/2025 - 09:38

Daniel Strain

Mechanical engineer Chip Bollendonk works on the IDEX instrument in a clean room at LASP. (Credit: �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder/Patrick Campbell)

UPDATE: IMAP successfully launched around 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Sept. 24.

On Wednesday, Sept. 24, a scientific instrument from Colorado is scheduled to launch into space from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida—beginning its search for very small visitors to our solar system from the galaxy beyond.

The Interstellar Dust Experiment (IDEX) is one of 10 instruments flying aboard NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). Among other goals, the mission will investigate the energization of charged particles streaming from the sun, known as the solar wind, and its interaction at its boundary with interstellar space.

NASA's IMAP

Princeton University professor and principal investigator, David J. McComas, leads the IMAP mission with an international team of more than 25 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is managing the development phase, building the spacecraft, and will operate the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

IDEX was designed and built by a team at the �鶹��Ѱ��’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Shaped like a large drum, the instrument will collect and analyze grains entering our solar system from interstellar space. It will also collect particles shed from comets and asteroids in our own solar system.

“Interstellar dust gets to the very heart of the origin and evolution of the solar system,” said IDEX Instrument Lead Mihály Horányi, a scientist at LASP and professor in the Department of Physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “It may be the closest thing we have today to the building blocks of our solar system billions of years ago.”

These particles, sometimes known as “stardust,” have been traveling for a long time.

When massive stars die, they explode in brilliant supernovas, scattering their remains far into the galaxy. This river of stardust churns through the Milky Way for millions of years, entering our solar system with a speed of about 58,000 miles per hour.

“The IMAP mission marks a leap forward in understanding how our sun interacts with our local interstellar neighborhood,” said Bethany Ehlmann, director of LASP. “I’m excited to see the launch and looking forward to the insights that the ambitious mission will tell us about the origins and evolution of our solar system.”

IDEX by the numbers:

932,000 miles

After IMAP lifts off from Florida, the spacecraft will begin a nearly four-month journey over 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) to a location in space that called Lagrange Point 1 (L1)—roughly 1% of the way from Earth to the Sun. It’s a sort of parking lot in space where a spacecraft can maintain its position without using a lot of fuel.

IDEX will start its work before that. Several weeks after launch, the instrument will flip open its door and begin preparing to collect dust.

Image: Artist's depiction of the IMAP spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/Princeton University/Patrick McPike)

43 particles

Interstellar dust continually flows into our solar system, moving in a single direction like a current. Astronomer Carl Sagan referenced this material in his famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.” Most of this dust has likely been destroyed and recondensed multiple times over its journey, Horányi said.

To date, scientists have only detected and analyzed 43 grains of interstellar material, in addition to a handful of candidate grains found embedded in meteorites. IDEX will be entering a mostly uncharted territory.

“Every single grain has a high level of importance to us,” Horányi said.

When these particles zip into the instrument, they will smack into a target at its back, instantly vaporizing into a puff of neutral elements, electrons and ions. IDEX will analyze the ions from each impact, identifying the materials that make up the dust. That may include minerals rich in elements like silica, magnesium, and iron, and possibly larger organic molecules.

Image: Graphic of the heliosphere, a bubble in space created as the solar wind flows away from the sun. (Credit: NASA/IBEX/Adler Planetarium)

16.15 inches

To capture interstellar dust, the IDEX team developed the largest instrument of this kind. IDEX weighs about 47 pounds. Its opening measures more than 20 inches across, and the target at its back is 16.15 inches wide.

Altogether, the IDEX team estimates that it could collect around 100 grains of interstellar dust every year during the first two years of the primary IMAP mission.

IDEX comes from a long line of dust instruments built by LASP. They include the Europa SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), which launched for Jupiter’s moon Europa last year aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Scott Tucker, project manager for IDEX, noted that the instrument will also collect grains of interplanetary dust, or material shed from comets and asteroids in our solar system. These particles move a lot slower than stardust, so he and his colleagues designed the instrument to accommodate a wide range of impacts—which required careful design of IDEX’s electronics.

“We want to measure things that are small and not very fast, and things that are bigger and very fast,” said Tucker, director of engineering at LASP.

Image: IDEX with its door open. (Credit: �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder/Patrick Campbell)

248 degrees Fahrenheit

In some cases, particles of dust may leave residue behind when they vaporize on the IDEX target, which could contaminate future data—a bit like gunk on a car windshield.

The instrument team has a solution: The group will periodically raise the temperature of the IDEX target to 248 degrees Fahrenheit, burning away most of that residue. The target itself is coated in a layer of ultra-pure gold roughly 5 microns thick, or a little thicker than a human red blood cell.

“The target is going to be maintained to remain pristine, good as new again and again,” Horányi said.

Image: Mechanical engineer Tim Hellickson inspects the gold-coated impact target for IDEX. (Credit: LASP/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

87 names

It took a large team to make IDEX a reality, including professional scientists and engineers, and many students. When the instrument launches, it will carry a plaque with the names of 87 of these team members—although Horányi estimates that closer to 100 people participated in the IDEX project.

Tucker and Horányi will be part of a contingent from LASP attending the launch in Florida.

“IDEX is going to be a whole different chapter in our ability to do these types of measurements, Horányi said. “I can hardly wait to look at the first impact.”

Image: Members of the IDEX team celebrate their first dust impact. The group tested IDEX by smashing particles of dust into its target using an accelerator at the Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres, and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) lab on campus. (Credit: LASP/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder/Chip Bollendonk)

Beyond the story

Our space impact by the numbers:

19 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder-affiliated astronauts
No. 1 public university recipient of NASA research awards
Only academic research institute in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system

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A new instrument built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder will capture tiny particles streaming into our solar system from the galaxy beyond.

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$750K grant to advance naval aviation materials research

Megan Maneval — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:24:56 +0000

$750K grant to advance naval aviation materials research Megan Maneval Thu, 09/04/2025 - 11:24

Maryam Shakiba is studying complex composite materials with machine learning to make stronger and lighter aircraft for the Navy.

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How to save a satellite: Student team races the clock to study a hazardous region of space

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:48:46 +0000

How to save a satellite: Student team races the clock to study a hazardous region of space Daniel William… Wed, 08/13/2025 - 07:48

Daniel Strain

Artist's depiction of the CSIM CubeSat in orbit around Earth. (Credit: LASP)

One Colorado satellite recently got a second chance at life—and science—thanks to a group of undergraduate students and professional engineers at the �鶹��Ѱ��.

In December 2022, an operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) switched off communications with a spacecraft known as the Compact Spectral Irradiance Monitor (CSIM). As far as anyone knew, the mission of this small satellite, or CubeSat, which had launched in 2018, was over.

Members of the small satellites operation team at LASP monitor a spacecraft in orbit. (Credit: LASP)

Adrian Bryant working in operations at LASP. (Credit: LASP)

“We decommissioned it, said goodbye, and we just left it up there in orbit,” said Adrian Bryant, who was an undergraduate student at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and a spaceflight operations command controller at LASP at the time.

Years later, Bryant and his colleagues would kick off a race against time to regain control of CSIM, and with just months to go before it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. They wanted to explore a poorly understood region of space called Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO).

VLEO, which extends from around 150 to 220 miles above Earth’s surface, is a hazardous place. The atmosphere there is many times thicker than it is in Low Earth Orbit, which lies at about 250 to more than 1,000 miles above the surface. Companies and space agencies around the world, however, are increasingly hoping to launch satellites to this region, in part because it offers a closer view of the planet’s surface.

“This is the first time in history that the technology is widely available for people to work in VLEO,” said Bryant, who graduated from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering sciences last spring and has since begun his master’s degree. “To learn these lessons about VLEO early on could be really helpful for the scientific community and space industry.”

To do that, the researchers faced a big question: Could they operate CSIM, which is about the size of large cereal box, in this turbulent environment?

A second life

When LASP scientists first launched the CubeSat, they never expected to study Earth at all.

Instead, the mission team designed CSIM to collect and analyze radiation streaming from the sun. Like most CubeSats, CSIM, which had a budget of around $9.5 million, wasn’t meant to last long in space. When it experienced anomalies in electronics that were critical to its solar science mission, the team shut it done without too much sadness.

But Sierra Flynn, mission operations director for small satellites at LASP, never gave up on the little craft.

“For years, I hinted to my students—there’s a million-dollar spacecraft up there that you guys could do something with,” Flynn said.

Bryant landed on an idea in early 2025. CSIM was already falling back into Earth’s atmosphere. Could the team use its descent to learn something about VLEO?

Members of LASP's small satellites operations team pose for a photo. From left to right, Adrian Bryant, Reina Krumvieda, Sean Svihla, Adrienne Pickerill, Nicholas Ratajczyk and Sierra Flynn. (Credit: LASP)

From left to right, Adrian Bryant, Sierra Flynn and Nicholas Ratajczyk pose with a model of CSIM at the Small Satellite Conference. (Credit: LASP)

The researchers, he believed, could track CSIM’s motion to map how gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere dragged down the small satellite.

There was just one big problem: The team reestablished communications with CSIM in March 2025 and discovered that the CubeSat was tumbling wildly out of control. At CSIM’s current trajectory, it would burn up by June or July.

Race against time

The operations team scrambled to see if it could regain control of CSIM, which was barreling around Earth at more than 15,000 miles per hour.

Bryant and his colleagues needed to use the CubeSat’s three torque rods—essentially, a series of magnets inside the spacecraft’s body. If the group could align these magnets to Earth’s own magnetic field in just the right way, that would slow down CSIM’s spinning in space.

With trial and error and a lot of luck, the researchers managed to do just that—all by late May, with just weeks to spare.

The group was finally able to run its experiments. In July, the CSIM team tilted the CubeSat at various angles to reduce or increase the drag it experienced while flying through Earth’s atmosphere.

These maneuvers allowed the researchers to explore “the practical difficulties of operating in a ‘high-drag’ environment where the upper atmosphere is thicker, and, consequently, the satellite orbit changes rapidly,” said Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at LASP who was part of the CSIM project.

A final farewell

The researchers are still analyzing their data, but they have already learned valuable lessons about how to successfully operate spacecraft in VLEO, said Nicholas Ratajczyk. He’s an undergraduate student studying aerospace sciences. Ratajczyk enrolled at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder after previously earning a bachelor’s degree in German from the University of Northern Colorado in 2010.

“My lifelong passion has always been space,” Ratajczyk said. “I’ve always wanted to work in spaceflight operations, so being able to improve our understanding of operating spacecraft in challenging environments—this is why I came back to school. This is my dream job.”

He and his colleagues are already looking ahead to the next missions they can operate in VLEO. In 2026, another LASP CubeSat, known as the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE), is set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

As for CSIM, the small satellite finally met its end in the atmosphere, likely over the weekend.

Bryant and Ratajczyk are presenting the team’s results Wednesday, Aug. 13 at the 39th Annual Small Satellite Conference in Salt Lake City.

“Hopefully, the lessons that we learned here are going can help LASP get the most out of future missions,” Ratajczyk said.

Over several white-knuckle months, an operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics brought a small satellite back from the dead—just in time to explore a region of space known as Very Low Earth Orbit.

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The reaches of �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder research

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