The space center launched its graduate degree program with five students in January 2005 on the Fayetteville campus.  This fall, the program has grown to include 16 doctoral students, including seven beginning classes this month.

	Katherine Coleman University of Arkansas BS, MS - Geology
	Jackie Denson Tennessee Tech University/University of Maryland BS - Biology; MS - Molecular & Cell Biology
	Ahmed El Shafie University of Cairo, Egypt BS - Space Science
	Daniel Ostrowski Carroll College BS - Chemistry
	Robert Pilgrim University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom BS - Astrophysics
	Fatemeh Sedaghatpour Shiraz University, Iran BS, MS - Chemistry
	Navita Sinha University of Patna, India BS, MS - Chemistry

The space center has recently received $1 million from NASA for the 2006-2007 fiscal year.  The funding will support graduate and undergraduate research projects, equipment purchases, and facilities upgrades at the center over the next year.  It is the third consecutive year the center has received at least $1 million in NASA funding.

Funds from the grant will help pay for research projects by center faculty and students, including analysis of the atmosphere on Mars and a proposal to NASA for a $415 million UA-led space mission to collect samples from an asteroid near Earth.

The space center also plans to purchase new lab equipment with the funds and renovate the university’s planetarium, which has been closed for 25 years.  The funds will also help support the center’s undergraduate research programs and outreach initiatives.

The space center has received $8.16 million in grants since 2000 and gets additional funding from a number of sources, including the National Science Foundation and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

The center is launching a research program for UArk Honors undergraduates this fall.  This academic-year long program is modelled on the center’s summer undergraduate research program.  That program recently finished its fifth year and is open to undergraduates from all over the world.

Work is underway to expand facilities at the space center.  The center has ordered a  $600,000 mass spec-trometer, which will be used to analyze isotopes in samples.  Another $250,000 is going to build two “clean rooms” to allow for the analysis of sensitive dust samples, e.g. Stardust.  Stardust is a robotic spacecraft by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.  The two labs are expected to be finished by the end of summer.  Another laboratory is being set up to study meteorite samples, and there are plans to develop a flight instruments development lab to continue work on the Hera mission.

The space center is planning to open a planetarium sometime in the fall.  When fully renovated, and housed in a new planetarium being constructed in the old museum, the projector will be used for astronomy teaching and public shows. The historic Spitz A1 projector was built in 1941 and was housed in the physics building until the early eighties when the planetarium closed.

Photo:  Jerry Homesley, Claud Lacy and Walter Graupner with the physics department planetarium projector