In a discovery decades in the making, scientists have detected the first of a “theoretical” class of stars first proposed in 1975 by physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow.

A University of Colorado Boulder payload carrying a novel device designed to reduce the weight and cost of spacecraft fuel pumping systems has been manifested for launch on a suborbital space plane called SpaceShipTwo developed by the aerospace company Virgin Galactic.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Charles Elachi and his senior management team will be on the University of Colorado Boulder campus May 22 to sign a memorandum of understanding with top university officials to continue and broaden a rich tradition of collaboration on space and Earth-science efforts going back nearly 50 years. Elachi will sign the MOU May 22 with CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. Located in Pasadena, Calif., JPL is a federally funded research and development facility managed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA.

A University of Colorado Boulder professor who developed a clever method to measure snow depth using GPS signals is collaborating with Western Slope officials to make the data freely available to a variety of users on a daily basis.

Rounding out a full day of touring CU-Boulder facilities and meeting with faculty, staff and students, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke to a packed house on the afternoon of April 18, 2014. Bolden acknowledged the close association CU-Boulder has with the space program, calling the university a “pipeline for talent.”

Members of the business community are invited to attend AeroSpace Ventures Day on April 17 at the University of Colorado Boulder. The all-day event offers aerospace industry technologists, scientists and managers a chance to connect with 24 CU-Boulder faculty members and to learn about technological and scientific advances with applications ranging from human space exploration to climate and weather. Corporate recruiters and hiring managers also are invited to meet with the 140 undergraduate and graduate engineering students who have registered for the event.

Tremendous growth in enrollments and a changing economic, technological and reputational landscape have prompted the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder to set two ambitious new goals for the year 2020. Improvements in the college’s “Best Graduate Schools” rankings, released in mid-March by U.S. News & World Report, indicate good progress in the right direction.

Three University of Colorado Boulder undergraduates have been awarded prestigious Goldwater Scholarships for 2014. The scholarships, which are worth up to $7,500 each, are awarded annually to sophomores and juniors across the nation on the basis of high academic merit. The 2014 winners from CU-Boulder are Jasmine Brewer, a junior in engineering physics, Brennan Coffey, a junior in chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and Ryan Dewey, a junior in astrophysics and physics.

University of Colorado Boulder alumnus and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson will blast off with two Russian crewmates for the International Space Station March 25, his third mission to the orbiting facility.

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds. Many of these nascent systems will go on to develop planets, while others will have their planet-forming dust and gas blasted away by the fierce ultraviolet radiation emitted by massive O-type stars that lurk nearby.