“Deeper understanding of the universe”: CU Boulder celebrates 75 years of space exploration

The University of Colorado Boulder is home to the only academic research institute worldwide that’s sent space instruments to every planet in the solar system.

It’s also sent multiple instruments to the sun and a variety of moons through NASA missions. The institute, called the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is CU Boulder’s oldest and highest-budget research institute and is rounding out its 75th year of space exploration.

“It’s the many individual accomplishments that piling on together really are a truly incomparable kind of achievement,” LASP Director Daniel Baker said.

LASP was founded in April 1948 as the Upper Air Laboratory, when a U.S. Air Force research lab contracted with the CU Boulder physics department to study the sun by launching instruments mounted on surplus World War II rockets. The Upper Air Laboratory was renamed LASP in 1963 and conducted its first interplanetary missions in the 1960s. In the 1980s, CU Boulder students began operating on NASA missions, a tradition that continues today.

Alex Doner is a CU Boulder graduate student leading work on the Student Dust Counter instrument on NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. The instrument was designed and built by students at CU Boulder and has been collecting data billions of miles from Earth for 18 years. Doner is the eighth student to lead the project.

Doner has also worked on three different flight instruments that are in space or going to space soon. He’s had hands-on experience building space instruments and learning from expert scientists along the way.

“It is a dream job for an undergraduate or graduate student,” Doner said, adding, “That is just an unbelievably unique and rare opportunity that I got to have here at LASP.

Models of spacecraft with connections to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics are seen in the lobby of the LASP at the University of Colorado Boulder on Tuesday. (Matthew Jonas/Staff Photographer)

‘The next generation in space’

Senior research scientist Fran Bagenal joined LASP in 1992. She said the Student Dust Counter is an “amazing” instrument and a “phenomenal achievement” for LASP and its students.

“The most important thing I think LASP has done for the United States Space program is to train the next generation of scientists and engineers,” Bagenal said.

Training the next generation of students and early career scientists and engineers is a strength of LASP, said Shannon Curry, principal investigator on the MAVEN mission to Mars.

“That’s something that I think LASP does a really phenomenal job with, is thinking about the next generation in space,” Curry said.

MAVEN is the first mission dedicated to studying Mars’ upper atmosphere and the spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since 2014. It’s studying the loss of Mars’ atmospheric gases to space, providing insight into the history of the planet’s climate and water.

MAVEN is one of many NASA missions LASP is involved in that attempt to understand the solar system and answer questions about life-sustaining conditions on other planets.

“It’s a really, really exciting time and in some ways an inflection point to see how far we’ve come and what growth will look like for the next 75 years,” Curry said.

The Europa Clipper will go to Europa, Jupiter’s moon, in October of 2024. Europa is covered in ice, and beneath the ice, scientists believe are vast oceans of water. The goal is to determine whether Jupiter’s moon is suitable for life. The LASP-built Surface Dust Analyzer will be on board the Europa Clipper and will analyze dust ejected from the surface to provide insight into the oceans of water.

“This is one of the most exciting potential habitable areas in the universe. Europa, unlike a lot of places, it gets warmer as you go farther down into the ocean,” Curry said. “So the Europa Clipper will be one of hopefully many steps to start to investigate these icy worlds and think about what kinds of other habitable places in the solar system there may be.”

A model of the Hubble Space Telescope is seen at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, LASP, at the University of Colorado Boulder on Tuesday. (Matthew Jonas/Staff Photographer)

‘We’re going to continue to explore’

Curry said LASP will play an important role in answering big science questions about understanding Earth and humanity’s origins.

“Why is Earth habitable? Why did Earth form the way it did, and could other planets have turned out the same way? Could they still turn out the same way?” Curry said, adding, “All of these questions really get at where did all of this start and why.”

Space weather will be another critical area of study for future exploration, Bagenal said. The material that comes from the sun and creates space weather has a big effect on satellites, communications and any humans or spacecraft that go out into space.

“Trying to understand the planets, the sun, the influence of the sun on the planets and the space environment around the planets is both intellectually interesting — why is Jupiter so different from Pluto or different from the Earth — but also practical in application,” Bagenal said.

LASP is beginning to explore exoplanetary systems, planets outside Earth’s solar system, and using knowledge from Earth’s solar system to learn how others work. Baker said he sees LASP playing a role in understanding the role of human activity in changing the planet, causing climate change.

“I think we’re going to continue to explore the cosmos to develop a deeper understanding of the universe in which we live,” Baker said.