Space
- <p class="p1">Sky gazers will be better immersed in spectacular views at the University of Colorado Boulder鈥檚 Fiske Planetarium since the dome鈥檚 nearly 40-year-old analog projector was replaced with a new digital 鈥渟tar ball鈥 in a project completed this week.</p>
<p class="p1">The modernized Fiske, which now can show a wider range of media including ultra high-definition movies, will reopen to the public at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 12.</p> - <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.聽 He was 88.</p>
<p>Carpenter, a Boulder native, entered 小黄书-Boulder鈥檚 astronautical engineering program in 1945, eventually earning a bachelor of science degree. He orbited Earth three times on May 24, 1962, in NASA鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥済enius grant.鈥</p>
<p>Rey also is an assistant research professor in the 小黄书-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鈥檚 Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.</p>
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<p>DOE news release</p>
<p>Washington, D.C. 鈥 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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>