Space Outreach Program Joins UTIG

December 12, 2023

The Texas Space Grant Consortium helps encourage careers in space research and exploration by offering grants and hosting student science and engineering competitions. In late fall 2022, they became a part of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

Texas Space Grant is the Texas branch of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, an outreach initiative established in 1988 to advance U.S. space science. It was previously associated with The University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research. UTIG Director Demian Saffer said that the institute was a natural fit for Texas Space Grant.

“We have folks here who are designing the instruments that are going to Europa, who are modeling geo-dynamos on gas giants, and who are investigating whether life could exist on other planets,” he said. “There’s a lot to be leveraged here.”

Texas Space Grant provides funding for undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships and stipends for internships at NASA and other space exploration organizations. It also coordinates engineering contests, such as NASA’s Micro-g NExT challenge. Student-designed tools from this challenge have made their way to the International Space Station, including zip-tie cutters designed by a team from Lone Star College in Houston in 2017. The cutters fit snuggly into astronaut gloves so they don’t float away during space walks.

With Texas Space Grant now settled into its new home at UTIG, its priority is to partner with more schools, find new funding sources and increase higher education STEM opportunities, said Tim Urban, the director of the program.

“I would like to have more industry involvement especially with so many Texas companies getting into the space race,” he said.

Texas Space Grant can be found at tsgc.utexas.edu.