Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research

Bob Marshall is studying the interaction of high-energy particles in orbit around Earth using an unlikely data source: radio signals sent by the U.S. Navy to communicate with submarines under the ocean. The assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder has earned a...

Jay McMahon is joining a groundbreaking NASA mission to test asteroid deflection technology. McMahon, an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder has been named a participating scientist in the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART is the first...

In response to solar storms, electrons and ions are produced in the Earth’s magnetosphere that collide with the upper atmosphere’s oxygen and nitrogen. This collision causes a release of energy in the form of a magnificent glow of light - an aurora. Only visible in high-latitude regions, auroras have long...

Penina Axelrad has built her career pushing the boundaries of GPS technology. As a faculty member in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, she has earned accolades from her peers, served in leadership positions, taught hundreds and hundreds of students, been inducted into the National Academy...

Álvaro Romero-Calvo is sending research up, up and away with Blue Origin. The second-year aerospace PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder has won the 2021 Ken Souza Memorial Student Spaceflight Research Program, sponsored by the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research, earning him a payload slot on...

Professor Jade Morton's new book has been published. Morton is the lead editor of Position, Navigation, and Timing Technologies in the 21st Century (PNT21) , now available from Wiley-IEEE Press. The textbook follows more than five years of work by 131 authors from 18 countries. It offers comprehensive coverage of...

Fourteen university innovators including Smead Aerospace's Mahmoud Hussein and Scott Palo pitched their technologies at Lab Venture Challenge (LVC), a funding competition hosted by Venture Partners at CU Boulder that helps commercially-promising technologies accelerate into impactful business ventures. Judges from the local entrepreneurial ecosystem awarded a record total of 12...

The latest episode of PBS's NOVA spotlights NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission and the effort to understand and protect Earth against the prospect of a rogue asteroid. Paul Sánchez, a senior research associate in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research is featured the episode, which premiered Oct. 21. Sánchez joined CU Boulder...

André Antunes de Sá, a PhD candidate in the Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department, is co-author of a new paper published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. The work, released in August, is titled “Lightning Distance Estimation Using LF Lightning Radio Signals via Analytical and...

New findings from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission suggest that the interior of the asteroid Bennu could be weaker and less dense than its outer layers—like a crème-filled chocolate egg flying though space. The results appear in a study published today in the journal Science Advances and led by the University of...