CU aerospace program begins 2009 on a roll

As you stroll along Innovation Drive on the CU campus in Boulder, don’t be alarmed if you hear loud popping noises coming from the LASP Space Technology Research Center building. January has been another banner month for the CU aerospace program, and the champagne corks continue to fly.

Recent NASA contract awards have fueled a decade-long winning streak at the University of Colorado. Since 2004, CU has received more NASA research funding than any other public university in the United States. More recently, NASA tapped LASP in May 2008 to build a $34 million instrument package for an upcoming solar probe, and again in September to lead a $485 million Mars orbiter mission.

Four new wins in January may seem modest in monetary terms, but each has the potential to build scientific expertise at CU, ensuring its dominance well into the next decade.

The first two contract wins involve the new NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI). If you’ve been living in a cave and haven’t heard yet, NASA will spend nearly $100 billion over the next 10 years to send astronauts back to the Moon and establish a permanent lunar base. Innovative lunar science will enable this grand endeavor and will play a key role in the preparations.

The NLSI plans to fund 100 researchers around the country by the year 2010. These researchers will collaborate as a “virtual” institute coordinated by the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. The NLSI chose seven initial teams in mid-January, including two from CU-Boulder and a third from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder:

• Southwest Research Institute proposal: Understanding the Formation and Bombardment History of the Moon. Principal Investigator: William Bottke.
• University of Colorado – Boulder proposal: Lunar University Node for Astrophysics Research: Exploring the Cosmos from the Moon. Principal Investigator: Jack Burns.
• University of Colorado – Boulder proposal: NASA Lunar Science Institute: Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies. Principal Investigator: Mihaly Horanyi.

CU’s aerospace success isn’t limited to NASA contracts. As the third recent cork-popping event, CU has created a new joint venture with private industry called eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship. To form eSpace, CU partnered with SpaceDev, a leading NewSpace technology company with local offices (formerly Starsys Research) just down the street in Louisville.

Scott Tibbitts, executive director of eSpace and former founder of Starsys, best described the potential of this collaboration: "By providing access to the academic resources of the university, grants to promising space entrepreneurs, and access to both the manufacturing infrastructure of SpaceDev and a network of experienced aerospace entrepreneurs, we expect to create a fertile environment for ensuring the best possible chance of success for startup space companies.”

For the fourth January win at CU, a team of about 40 aerospace students won first place in an intense national competition for nanosatellite design. The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research sponsored the competition, which included teams from 11 universities. The Air Force will also launch the CU team’s nanosatellite entry, the Drag and Atmospheric Neutral Density Explorer (DANDE), by 2011 as a secondary payload. While DANDE's life in orbit will be relatively brief, the positive experience generated by this program at CU will last for generations.

With so many notable successes in January, the CU aerospace program has certainly begun 2009 on a roll, setting a high bar for the rest of the year. Will they keep their momentum in February? Stay tuned!