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Shayna Hume, a graduate student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ, is blasting off on an adventurous journey: She's heading to Mars (or at least as close to Mars as you can get on Earth).

After NASA successfully landed the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars, the unique hurdles of human space exploration are in the spotlight again. They're also the bread and butter of researchers studying bioastronautics at ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ.

Drawing on partnerships with NASA, the DOD and the aerospace industry, the College of Engineering and Applied Science recently launched a new research initiative focusing on hypersonic vehicles—and will launch a new hypersonics grad certificate this summer.

����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ researchers are part of a high stakes (albeit collaborative) international race to find the gravitational wave background. Their project joins two others in Europe and Australia to make up a network called the International Pulsar Timing Array.

Hidden pockets of water could be much more common on the surface of the moon than scientists once suspected, according to new research led by ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ. In some cases, these tiny patches of ice might exist in shadows no bigger than a penny that have gone without a single ray of sunlight for billions of years.

Scientists at ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ are developing a satellite about the size of a toaster oven to explore one of the cosmos’ most fundamental mysteries: How did radiation from stars punch its way out of the first galaxies to fundamentally alter the make-up of the universe as it we know it today?

New findings from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission suggest that the interior of the asteroid Bennu could be weaker and less dense than its outer layers—like a crème-filled chocolate egg flying though space. The findings could give scientists new insights into the evolution of the solar system’s asteroids.

����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ and Lockheed Martin will lead a new space mission to capture the first-ever closeup look at a mysterious class of solar system objects: binary asteroids. These bodies are pairs of asteroids that orbit around each other in space, much like the Earth and moon.

NASA and the National Science Foundation have awarded two ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ space weather scientists more than $5M to lay the groundwork for faster and more robust space weather forecasts. Both projects are led by CIRES scientists working with the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.

“It really takes an interdisciplinary approach to think about analyzing and designing a hypersonic vehicle,” said Iain Boyd, an aerospace engineering professor at ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ. The university has awarded a two-year grant to Boyd and 20 other faculty members to model better designs for such vehicles.