Texas Space Grant Update

Eclipse Science, Designing Moon Tools, Virtual Space Missions

To experience a solar eclipse is a rare occurrence, but to experience two in six months is a once-in-a-lifetime event. But that is exactly what happened over Central Texas, with an annular solar eclipse in October 2023 and a total solar eclipse in April 2024. For both, the Texas Space Grant Consortium hosted overnight camping at local scout camps provided by the Capitol Area Council for over 1,500 Texas youths, who learned how eclipses occur and how to safely observe them.

At the April total eclipse event, Doug Hemingway, an assistant research professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, spoke to campers about the science behind eclipses, safety, and exoplanet transits. The campers witnessed two launches of scientific balloons by undergraduate students from universities in Puerto Rico, who were sponsored by the Puerto Rico Space Grant. The campers were also joined by a special guest: former astronaut Mike Fossum, who is now the chief operating officer of Texas A&M University at Galveston.

For more than 20 years, Texas Space Grant has hosted a design challenge workforce development program that has connected undergraduate teams of Texas STEM students with mentors from NASA. This year, 24 teams from 16 Texas institutions were selected to participate in a challenge related to NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon. The topics were as diverse as developing lunar camera and lighting systems, lunar vehicle design, and dust mitigation. Team projects are reviewed by NASA and other experts, and the top design teams earn Texas Space Grant scholarships.

This year, Texas Space Grant also supported two Space Teams programs that provide middle and high school students from across Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico the opportunity to engage in a series of space mission design and simulation modules. The program is supported by the NASA-funded Space Grant KIDS project and is conducted in partnership with Texas A&M University and two other state space grants.

For the first time, Texas college students had the chance to use virtual reality to design their own Martian buildings in Space Team University’s Mars City Design Competition, a new addition to the Texas Space Grant/Texas A&M University Space Teams partnership program.

The Texas Space Grant Consortium is the Texas branch of NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, an outreach initiative to ensure that space research benefits are available to all Texans. Texas Space Grant is hosted at UTIG. Its director is Tim Urban.