Since the late 1940s, the University of Colorado Boulder has sent important experiments and instruments to every planet in our solar system. In 50+ space missions, NASA spacecraft have launched hundreds of instruments from CU Boulder as well as 20 CU scientists, faculty and alumni – including 18 from Boulder, one from UCCS and one from CU Anschutz. CU Boulder Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Professor Jack Burns continues to have longstanding ties with NASA that benefit the department and CU as a leading-edge institution.

* The University of Colorado is a powerhouse in terms of an aerospace. How it began and where we are now.
* CU in space: More than 300 CU students are majoring in astronomy and astrophysics. The next largest program in the U.S. is less than half of that size.
* CU’s impact on past missions and its potential looking ahead.
* Moving ahead to the moon, vs. going back to the moon.
* Investigating the deployment of low frequency radio antennas in the lunar/cis-lunar environment using surface telerobotics, to take cosmological measurements of exotic physics.
* SpaceX – what does it mean for space exploration to privatize missions?
* Colonizing the moon? It could happen!
* Then maybe Mars, then maybe one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa.
* One hundred years from now.
* Increasing the efficiency of propulsion.
* Star Trek beaming up? Maybe not.
* How right now is the cornerstone of sustaining space exploration and colonization.

Resources:

* CU Boulder Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences
* CU in Space
* NASA
* SpaceX