| Graduate Education |
| SPAC Orientation Trip to Arizona |
The space center graduate students, as well as some faculty and researchers, recently travelled to Arizona for the graduate student orientation field trip. On day one, the group went to Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. On day two, they went to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and the Lowell Observatory. On day three, everyone visited the Grand Canyon.
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Above left: Space center graduate students Katie Bryson, Julie Chittenden and Kathy Gietzen at Grand Canyon National Park |
Above right: Space center graduate students at Petrified Forest National Park |
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Bottom left: Space center graduate students, faculty and researchers hike at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument |
Bottom right: Space center graduate students, faculty and researchers listen to a presentation at Meteor Crater, Arizona |
| Student News |
| Katie Bryson |
This summer, Katie Bryson had the chance to spend a week at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, at the NASA Planetary Science Summer School. The purpose of the program was to learn about the process of developing a robotic planetary mission concept and the steps involved in making it a reality. Eighteen post-docs and graduate students worked together with JPL’s Advanced Projects Design Team (“Team X”) to design a mission similar to European Space Agency’s proposed ExoMars mission and to see how reasonable the mission’s current expectations are. They were each given the chance to work on a different subsystem and see how they all interact with each other. In addition, they were given the chance to enter some of the different labs at JPL, and see some of the up and coming plans for current and future planetary missions. Katie was able to learn more about how all the roles of mission design come together and where compromise has its part in making a mission reality. The Planetary Science Summer School showed how each part of the mission design process comes together to reach for the stars, or planets in this case.
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Back row: Maegan Spencer (Stanford), Joseph Bonetti (JPL), Jennifer Edmunson (U of NM), Zane Crawford (UC-Boulder), Christopher Fuse (Texas Christian), Eugene Fahnestock (U of Michigan), Katie Bryson (U of Arkansas), Jill Mikucki (Harvard), Craig Hardgrove (U of Tennessee), Michael Busch (Carnegie Mellon), Team-X member Front Row: Lydia Son (Raytheon), Natasha Johnson (USRA), Shannon Cheng (MIT), Amanda Cook (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Heather Smith (SETI), Mark Avnet (MIT), Sharon Wilson (Smithsonian Institution), Tibor Balint (JPL), Robert Kinsey (JPL) |
| Center Faculty |
| Conferences and Meetings |
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Julia Kennefick, a member of the space center and a faculty member in the department of Physics, went to the “Cosmic Frontiers” conference in Durham, England, from July 31 to August 4. The conference covered observational cosmology, with an emphasis on galaxy formation, large scale structure, and evolution. Her poster was titled “Infrared Imaging of SDSS Quasars: Implications for Quasar Evolution”. |
| Center Events |
| Derek Sears |
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Derek Sears, the director of the space center and a faculty member in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will give the first public lecture of the fall semester. It is entitled, “The Hera Project: Searching for Our Beginnings to Find our Future.” The lecture will be held on September 20, 2006, at the Poultry Sciences Auditorium, Room 211, at 7:00 pm. The cost is free and the event is open to the public. |
| Center Events |
| Fall 2006 Public Lectures |
FREE - Poultry Science Auditorium - 7:00 pm
“The Hera Project: Searching for Our Beginnings to Find our Future”
Dr. Derek Sears, UArk
Chemistry and Biochemistry Dept.
September 20, 2006
“Travelling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein, Astronomy and the Early History of Gravitational Waves”
Dr. Daniel Kennefick, UArk
Physics Dept.
November 15, 2006