Space Center faculty, staff, graduate students, REU students and guests listen to the REU poster presentations.
	Space center REU student Salma Alam presents her mid-term poster.

The space center had its fifth General Meeting on June 30, 2006.  In the morning, the space center summer REU students had mid-term poster presentations to show their research.  During lunch, Rick Ulrich, the Deputy Director of the space center and a faculty member in the department of Chemical Engineering, gave the keynote address, titled “This Time to Stay: Our Return to the Moon”.  During the afternoon, the SPAC graduate students gave oral presenations of their research.  The Chair of the External Board, Dr. Stephen Saunders, a Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, and his wife Susan, also participated in the day. 

Jeff Evans, a Graduate Research Assistant and Doctoral Academy Fellow in the department Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas recently received a NASA GSRP award through the NASA-Glen Reseach Center.  His advisor is Ashok Saxena, the Dean of the College of Engineering. 

This research project will evaluate the oxygen embrittlement of Ni-base superalloys at elevated temperature.  These alloys are used in some of the most demanding NASA applications, such as gas turbines for aircraft. 

This research project is a collaboration with Tim Gabb and Jack Telesman of the NASA Glenn Research Center.  From those discussions ME3, an advanced disk superalloy developed by the team of NASA Glenn, General Electric, and Pratt & Whitney, for with an R&D 100 Award was received, was determined to be the alloy of greatest interest for this research project.  

One goal of this research project is to develop a creep crack growth model that incorporates the environmental contribution.  In order to accomplish this a set of oxidation experiments will be conducted to more fully evaluate the oxide that forms at elevated temperature on ME3.  Along with oxidation/diffusion experiments, creep-fatigue experiments using air, vacuum and controlled partial pressure of oxygen will be performed at the University of Arkansas and at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.  Subsequent analytical techniques will be employed to evaluate grain boundary diffusion, fracture surfaces, and embrittlement mechanisms.

Shelly Bursick recently completed her Master’s thesis entitled, “Selection and Discovery of Quasars at High Redshift Through Optical and Infrared Imaging”.  Her advisor is Julia Kennefick, a member of the space center and a faculty member in the department of Physics.     

Shelly’s thesis was designed to aid in the computing of the space density of faint quasars at a redshift between 4.8 and 6 by removing late type stars from the Big Throughput camera (BTC)40 search for quasars candidate list.  The BTC40 survey was a multicolor survey for quasars at high redshift, which proved successful at finding quasars, but due to the faintness of the candidates and the presence of contaminants, spectroscopy could not be computed for the entire survey.  Shelly added the J-band targeted imaging data in an attempt to refine the candidate list for follow-up on an 8m class telescope.  Refinement of the list began with her observing 45 of the unidentified BTC40 quasar candidates with Malcolm Smith at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American observatory (CTIO) at the 4m Blanco telescope during the spring and fall ’05 semesters.  Reduction and analysis of data produced 7 possible quasar candidates for spectroscopic follow-up at an 8m class telescope.   A proposal written by Shelly and her advisor has been approved for observing the fall semester candidates on the CTIO 8m Gemini telescope.  They will be resubmitting a proposal for the spring candidates for time at the 8m Gemini telescope and once the objects’ spectra are obtained and reduced, for both semesters, the results will be published.

The Kid’s Life Summer Day Camp Program from LifeSource International, a non-profit organization in Fayetteville, Ark., recently visited the space center.  The Kid’s Summer Day Camp program is an eight-week, free program offered to disadvantaged, low-income and at-risk children in Northwest Arkansas.  Jessica Park, the Programs Administrator for the space center, showed the children the flourescent mineral collection, the Andromeda Chamber, and the meteorite collection at the space center.  The kids loved being able to hold a real meteorite and watch the flourescent minerals glow under different UV ray waves.

Seminars will be held at 3 pm in the Keck Lab (room 109) of the Old Museum Building.

Week 7 - July 5
Mars exploration I (geomorphology)
John Dixon

Week 8 - July 11
Mars exploration II (water and life)
Vincent Chevrier, Travis Altheide

Week 9 - July 18
Making an effective oral presentation
Rick Ulrich

Week 10 - July 27
Final presentations (oral) by REU students
afternoon; Keck Lab; MUSE 109