For 75 years, CU Boulder has been a leader in space exploration and innovation. We travel to space to monitor sea level rise, melting ice, weather patterns and more. Our researchers explore how to track and remove dangerous debris in space. We research the health of humans in space to inform medical applications for people on Earth.ÌýLearn more about the latest in space research and science at CU Boulder.
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hypersonic vehicle

CU Boulder awarded major Department of Defense research grant for hypersonics

April 1, 2022

CU Boulder has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to advance the science of hypersonic flight. Aerospace Professor Iain Boyd is leading the Department of Defense initiative.

Artist’s rendition of the NOAA GOES satellite

Go for launch: GOES satellite includes instrument built at CU Boulder

Feb. 28, 2022

The satellite carries a state-of-the-art solar monitor built at CU Boulder to protect national technology assets from space weather hazards. Read more from LASP senior scientist Frank Eparvier.

Artist's depiction of Orion Spacecraft leaving Earth's orbit

Not your grandparents’ Apollo: Planetarium film captures NASA’s new moon missions

Feb. 16, 2022

A new full-dome film premiering at the Fiske Planetarium Feb. 18 will take viewers to the moon and back, introducing NASA’s newest efforts to establish a long-term human presence on the lunar surface.

Engineers in cleanroom gear load a small satellite into a rocket

After 2-year delay, international student team set to launch satellite into space

Feb. 10, 2022

Students from the United States and five other countries will be cheering when a small satellite called INSPIRESat-1 lifts off from a rocket pad in India on Monday, Feb. 14.

Superflare

CU Boulder scientists bring stellar flares into clearer focus

Jan. 28, 2022

In work that has implications for the search for life elsewhere in the galaxy, scientists are analyzing data from 440 stellar flares, finding them to be not just common and powerful but also more complex than previously thought.

CU Boulder undergraduate students, left to right, Adrian Bryant andÌýRithik Gangopadhyay work in the mission operations center for IXPE.

Students operate $214M spacecraft. ‘It’s like what you see in the movies.’

Jan. 18, 2022

In December, students and professionals sat in a mission operations center on campus to watch NASA's new Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer satellite blast off into space. But for the dedicated individuals managing the mission operations, the hard work had just begun.

Instrument built by graduate student Ryan Cole

Researchers replicate climates of exoplanets to help find extraterrestrial life

Dec. 23, 2021

Professor Greg Rieker and Ryan Cole have developed an experiment that recreates the climates of planets beyond our solar system right in the lab. By reaching the same high-temperature and high-pressure conditions found on many exoplanets, the instrument can map their atmospheres, which could help humanity detect life outside our solar system.

Artist's depiction of James Webb in space with its mirror unfolded.

New space telescope to peer back at the universe’s first galaxies

Dec. 21, 2021

The decades-in-the-making James Webb Space Telescope will observe light from the dawn of the universe and may even detect the gases swirling in the atmospheres of alien planets.

Illustration of space

NASA awards $14 million to CU for two new CubeSat missions

Dec. 20, 2021

Two new CubeSats, to be built by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), will provide first-of-their-kind measurements of gravity waves in Earth’s upper atmosphere and explosions in the Sun’s corona.

Artist’s rendering of an exoplanet system experiencing atmospheric escape

Scientists envision what Mars would look like as an exoplanet

Dec. 15, 2021

Which planets beyond our solar system are most likely to host life? By extrapolating the current scientific understanding of Mars, a multi-disciplinary team, including researchers from LASP, is helping identify alien planets that may be habitable.

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