Space

<p>Scott Carpenter, a University of Colorado Boulder alumnus and a famed NASA Mercury astronaut who became only the second American to orbit Earth, died Thursday.  He was 88.</p>
<p>Carpenter, a Boulder native, entered CU-Boulder’s astronautical engineering program in 1945, eventually earning a bachelor of science degree. He orbited Earth three times on May 24, 1962, in NASA’s Aurora 7 capsule before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.</p>

<p>A small satellite designed and built by a team of University of Colorado Boulder students to better understand how atmospheric drag can affect satellite orbits was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Sunday morning.</p>
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The satellite, known as the Drag and Atmospheric Neutral Density Explorer satellite, or DANDE, will investigate how a layer of Earth’s atmosphere known as the thermosphere varies in density at altitudes from about 200 to 300 miles above Earth. The commercial Falcon-9 SpaceX rocket lifted off the launch pad at about 10 a.m. MDT carrying DANDE, a small beach ball-sized satellite developed over a period of about six years by roughly 150 students, primarily undergraduates, as part of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, or COSGS.</div>

<p>Ana Maria Rey, a theoretical physicist and a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, today was named a winner of a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”</p>
<p>Rey also is an assistant research professor in the CU-Boulder Department of Physics. She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes.</p>

<p>A small beach ball-sized satellite designed and built by a team of University of Colorado Boulder students to better understand how atmospheric drag can affect satellite orbits is now slated for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Sept. 15.</p>

<p>A $6 million University of Colorado Boulder instrument designed to study the behavior of lunar dust will be riding on a NASA mission to the moon now slated for launch on Friday, Sept. 6, from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.</p>

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<p>DOE news release</p>
<p>Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy today announced the members of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB). The nineteen member board comprised of scientists, business executives, academics and former government officials will serve as an independent advisory committee to Energy Secretary Moniz.</p></div></div>

<p><span>The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, mission to Mars will carry just over 1,100 haiku, along with thousands of names, on its journey to the red planet. The haiku were part of a contest, sponsored by the University of Colorado Boulder, asking the public to submit haiku poetry relating to NASA’s upcoming MAVEN mission to Mars.</span></p>

<p><span>The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, mission to Mars will carry just over 1,100 haiku, along with thousands of names, on its journey to the red planet. The haiku were part of a contest, sponsored by the University of Colorado Boulder, asking the public to submit haiku poetry relating to NASA’s upcoming MAVEN mission to Mars.</span></p>

<p>Researchers at JILA have for the first time used an atomic clock as a quantum simulator, mimicking the behavior of a different, more complex quantum system.</p>

<p>University of Colorado Boulder astrophysicist Doug Duncan says this year's annual Perseid meteor shower and its natural nighttime light show will be particularly good as the display becomes visible over Colorado Aug. 10-13.</p>
<p>"The moon will be nearly new, so it's an especially good time to see the meteor shower," said Duncan, director of CU-Boulder's Fiske Planetarium.</p>