In his long and illustrious career in engineering, Kelly was a pioneer who started the Autonomous Land Vehicle project at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1984 and is credited with creating the foundation of the technology base leading to today’s driverless cars. A man with many interests, Kelly has traveled extensively, photographing wildlife on every continent in the world and publishing a book of penguin photography.

Closer to home, Clint Kelly also is a decades-long member of the Speed School’s Industrial Board of Advisors. To the engineering school’s River City Rocketry team, he’s a different kind of hero.

It all started about 20 years ago when a mutual friend of Mickey Wilhelm, dean of Speed School at the time, suggested that Kelly might be interested in working with the school’s advisory board. At a board meeting in 2011, Speed School student Nick Greco, who founded the River City Rocketry Team (RCR), came into the meeting and put a rocket down on the table.

“My first thought was how I had built one myself many years ago,” Kelly said. “I was always interested in how things worked more at an intellectual level than a hands-on,” Kelly said. “But I had a good friend who was great at the hands-on, so he and I used to build rockets, and we had to build everything from scratch.”

Kelly suggested to the board that they support this rocket team, a student-led organization that allows students the opportunity to design high powered rockets and compete against other universities across the country. Though the other board members didn’t share his interest at that time, Kelly decided to get involved anyway, and he has never wavered since in his enthusiasm or support for the team.

Founder Greco said the RCR has come a long way since that day.

“The year I founded the rocket team at UofL, we had zero funding and we were building most of our rocket in my apartment kitchen,” said Greco, who now works as an aerospace engineer at Blue Origin. “Clint saw and supported our vision and was a huge reason why it’s grown into the polished group it’s become at the university today.”

“They have a lot of great ideas and I’m continually impressed by them,” Kelly said of RCR. “What they learned by building these rockets and then competing in competitions were practical things. How to do the equations, and then how to translate the equations into hardware and address all the problems you have when you do that. They relate the calculations to what they actually observe when they launch it, and they do the diagrams themselves as well.”

It is this hands-on experience that has helped former RCR members secure prestigious jobs at NASA, Blue Origin and Space X as well as startups. Ìę

“For a startup, it’s immensely appealing because they don’t have the luxury of having lots of people and they want people that can do lots of different things and do them well,” Kelly said.

Kelly, a philanthropist who supports a variety of other causes, said he only gives to what is important to him.

“There is a feeling on my part that Speed School gives extremely good value. It costs to get an education that allows you to be successful, and I think Speed is a remarkable bargain,” he said. “It’s a very high quality engineering education.”

Speed School alumnus Gregg Blincoe ’15 is another success story with Blue Origin, where he has worked for more than six years.

“I knew I wanted to get involved in aerospace when I was up early one day watching the Mars Curiosity Rover land and I saw the excitement and joy in all the engineers’ faces,” Blincoe said. “I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself and River City Rocketry gave me that opportunity.”

Blincoe said the skills he learned at RCR had a direct impact on his professional career and have been relatable to his job on a daily basis at Blue Origin.

“RCR would not be where it is today, or would even be what it is today, if not for Clint Kelly,” he said. “He saw something in the idea of the team and the students behind it, and has been a supporter and mentor from day one.”

The guidance Kelly gave to RCR students came full circle when Kelly was granted a rare opportunity to fly into space in August 2022 on one of the rockets RCR students Blincoe and Greco helped design and build. Kelly said his space flight experience was “the thrill of a lifetime.”

Blincoe was excited to give back to his former mentor.

“I was so excited to realize I’d be there for his launch,” he said. “He got me the job that put rockets in space and now it was my turn to go and put Clint in space.”

“I probably would have never had the opportunity to work at Blue Origin without him,” Greco said. “Getting to see him fly aboard New Shepard, a rocket I had the opportunity to design part of – it was pretty surreal. I hope he gets the chance to go back to space again, hopefully aboard another Blue Origin rocket.”

“I’ll be forever grateful for the support and faith that Clint had in our team and RCR,” Blincoe said. “My life has been forever changed.”

Watch a video about Kelly’s trip aboard New Shepard 22 at the link below.

Read .

“My dad was a pilot for UPS, and I always had an affinity for space,” said the Speed School alumna. “When I was in elementary school, I told my dad I wanted to go to college at NASA.”

She had no idea how that child’s dream would actually one day come to fruition.

Fly me to the moon

Mazarakis, who graduated from with her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and a minor in astrophysics in 2019, was part of the team forÌęÌęlaunch on Nov. 15, the first of a series of space missions that aims to return humans to the moon and eventually, send them to Mars.Ìę

The 26-year old, who has been employed by NASA since April 2021, completed her MS in electrical and computer engineering specializing in radio frequency and avionics engineering from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University one month later. She worked as a NASA contractor for two years before her current position as a flight communications and tracking electrical engineer.

“My job in Artemis I is to be a part of the team that tests, verifies and prepares all the radio frequency and antenna systems for launch readiness, as well as the video systems on the Orion crew module,” Mazarakis said. “On launch day, we sit in the firing rooms and say, ‘Go for launch’ on all of the communication systems.

“It’s a feeling like no other. It’s almost like a day that you feel will never come, but when it does, it feels like your first child being born. You’ve put all this work and time and effort into this massive system,” Mazarakis said. “You’ve worked with so many other teams and everybody has really given all their blood, sweat and tears into a successful and safe launch.”

Mazarakis explained that the name Artemis encompasses all of the missions to the moon that NASA will be executing in the next decade.

“Artemis I is the first of a couple increasingly complex missions,” she said. “We will launch Artemis II, which is going to do an orbital flight. Artemis III will be the one where we plan on putting boots on the moon.”

From aspiring engineer to Cape Canaveral Ìę

Originally from New York City, Mazarakis and her family moved to Shelbyville, Kentucky, when she was a middle-schooler. As a high school senior, Mazarakis visited Speed School friends and saw the course work they were doing.

“It occurred to me that I really loved the idea of problem solving, critical thinking, thinking and making things,” she said. “Once I decided on engineering, I knew it would be Speed School because it’s the best engineering school around. Everybody knows their engineers go through a much more rigorous curriculum and are much more prepared for the real world.”

Mazarakis first majored in bioengineering, but changed gears to pursue aerospace once she joined the River City Rocketry (RCR) team, a student organization dedicated to the hands-on building of rockets. Named Student of the Year in 2019, Mazarakis attributes much of her ability and the jobs she’s been offered in her field to her foundational experience with Speed School and with RCR.

“River City Rocketry wasn’t just a club, it was a team where they only pick the people who have real passion that’s palpable, people who are going to be dedicated and spend all their extra time at the engineering garage and really learn how to build rockets,” Mazarakis said.

While a member of RCR, Mazarakis helped her team win the NASA student-launched competition against schools like Purdue, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt.

“These are schools that not only have aerospace programs, but the best in the nation,” she said.

The networking opportunities afforded by RCR and organizations like Phi Sigma Rho Sorority for Women in Engineering helped her secure an instrumental co-op rotation with Red Wire Space, sending her down the path to aerospace success.

“The fact that Speed School has so many alumni who end up at big space companies like NASA, Blue Origin, Gulf Stream Aerospace, SpaceX, is because we weren’t just sitting in class reading textbooks about aerospace,” Mazarakis said. “To be successful, we had to learn it ourselves and just do it. We had the ability to do that through the engineering garage (makerspace) and through mentorship from great professors, but just being able to have the tools was really fantastic.”

Mazarakis likened the rigorous academics of Speed School to boot camp, but said the long, tough hours prepared her for her demanding work schedule at NASA.

“You build up this mental rigor for work that is really useful,” she said. “Sometimes at NASA we work around the clock and I sleep under my desk. I really thought that after college, I would be able get a good night’s sleep. It’s a good thing that I braced myself early.”

The definition of a dream job

“To say working at NASA is gratifying is an understatement,” said Mazarakis. “My whole life I always wanted to work in space, and then at River City Rocketry I realized that I wanted to build rocket ships. But to be here now actually building them, it’s like I have to pinch myself on the daily.”

Mazarakis said a lot of the testing she performs for her job requires her to climb into the rocket’s crew module to test from inside the rocket.

“Of course, I’m focusing on my work when I’m in there but mentally I’m so excited saying to myself, ‘I’m in a rocket, I’m inside the rocket.’”

What is next for the young NASA engineer?

“I feel like I just achieved my ultimate dream, my ultimate goal just two years ago, so to me it feels weird to be thinking ahead right now,” she said. “I’m just so happy to be here where I am.”

What about the idea of Alora Mazarakis, astronaut?Ìę

“It is a lofty ambition and I think I will apply the next time a spaceflight class opens up,” she said. “Do I think I’ll get chosen? Probably not, but I would definitely try. If the opportunity arose, I would gladly, gladly accept – I’ll put it that way.”

Read more news on the Ìę

A team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) traveled from California on September 20 to collaborate with robotics researchers at the (LARRI) facility. NASA’s JPL is a federally-funded research and development center that works on developing new technology for robots that could be useful for future space exploration.

The 40-person JPL team, dubbed “CoStar” made the trip to University of Louisville to compete for a $2 million prize in the third and final round of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. This international robotics competition was held September 21-23 at Louisville Mega Caverns beneath the Louisville Zoo.

“Being out here at UofL Speed School and specifically working with LARRI is a fantastic way for us to be preparing and ensuring our robots and associated software are ready for competition,”Ìęsaid Benjamin Morrell, robotics engineer at JPL and deputy team lead of CoStar. “It’s an incredible facility.”

LARRI Director Dan Popa said the event is a great opportunity to showcase Speed School and the robotics program at the brand-new, cutting-edge facility.

“It is a really good spot to support this kind of competition because it has easy in and out access, and the facility itself was built in such a way to quickly deploy robots and test them,” Popa said. “We are pleased to see it being used to maximum capacity.”

In the DARPA SubT Challenge, CoStar, (which is a collaboration of JPL, CalTech, MIT, Kaist (University in Korea) and LTU (University in Sweden), competed against seven other teams of autonomous robots exploring unknown environments including cave, urban and mine elements and will demonstrate how their autonomy, networking, perception and mobility capabilities perform on physical courses underground.

Morrell explained that the system is designed for robots to go in quickly, map what a disaster area looks like and report back to a human rescue crew so they can pinpoint where survivors are and avoid areas that are dangerous.

“For a NASA application, we are looking at cave exploration on the moon and Mars, using this same kind of technology to gather scientific information,” said Morrell.

With a new research facility soon to open, Popa said the university is currently recruiting faculty from this same elite robotics community from around the country and the world.

“This helps visibility, and for people to know about what we’re doing here,” he said.

Speed School students also reap the benefits.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to be exposed to this,” said Popa. “The challenges that DARPA has put together have very difficult feats, and these teams are the cream of the crop in research around the world.”

With each new challenge, DARPA has played a role in moving robotics forward, according to Popa.

“Every five years DARPA has issued a new challenge and they have included autonomous driving, humanoid robots and now this subterranean challenge,” he said. “All these challenges are pushing development not just at universities but at companies, and eventually they come into the commercial sector.”

Check out video from the visit below.Ìę

The invention, a surgical fluid management system, flew aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo from Spaceport America in New Mexico in May, prior to Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space flight on July 11. The system is designed to make it possible for surgery to be conducted in a weightless environment and would be used on long-term space missions, such as on a lunar station or on deep-space missions such as to Mars.

The astrosurgery team, led by George Pantalos, professor in the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the School of Medicine, and Tommy Roussel, assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, has been working on the system for 10 years, a project that has involved 23 students so far.Ìę

The team previously tested the system on parabolic flights aboard jet aircraft, which provide roughly 20-second periods of weightlessness, but the Virgin Galactic flight allowed the system to be evaluated for the first time under the more strenuous conditions of space and encompassing a few minutes of weightlessness.

The system consists of a dome-like structure that is affixed to a surgical site to control bodily fluids that otherwise would float away in the weightlessness of space. It also includes a multifunction device that can be used for suction, irrigation, lighting, vision and other surgical tasks.

A glovebox designed by the team specifically for in-flight testing was mounted inside the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, VSS Unity, for the flight. In addition to the UofL-designed system, it also included a surgical fluid management system developed by collaborators at Cornell University. The experiments were automated entirely, with no communication between the team and the spacecraft during the flight. Components of the system were activated in response to timing and input from sensors within the glovebox.

“Embedded microcontrollers detected when microgravity – less than 0.05 Gs – had been reached and then initiated the test protocol,” Roussel said. “We only had one chance to get it right.”

The protocol included turning pumps on and off to increase or decrease pressure inside the containment dome to control bleeding, injecting simulated blood into the dome, testing the multifunction device’s suction, irrigation and light capabilities and finally, emptying the containment dome. ()

Every element of the test sequence was a success.

“It did all the functions it was instructed to do during the microgravity period,” Pantalos said. “There was a little bit of variation in how things worked compared to gravity on earth, but they weren’t showstoppers by any means. The whole system worked in the way it was expected to in zero gravity.”

The results set the stage for the next suborbital flight, which the team hopes will include sending a researcher into space along with the system.

“This flight brought work on the surgical fluid management system to the point where it is ready for an investigator to fly on a suborbital space flight such as the Virgin Galactic flight to perform additional tests, hopefully in the near future,” Pantalos said.

The human-tended research experience was evaluated in person during the Virgin Galactic test flight and more tended research missions are due to take place soon.

The development and the test flights for the surgical fluid management system were funded by the , which rapidly demonstrates promising technologies for space exploration, discovery and the expansion of space commerce through suborbital testing with industry flight providers. Each of the flight tests serves as a steppingstone in the development process, placing the technologies in relevant environments to improve their function and test feasibility while reducing the costs and technical risks of future missions.

Earlier in May, the team also conducted experiments aboard a series of three research flights with ZERO–G, a privately owned company that uses a modified Boeing 727 jet to create a weightless environment using parabolic flight patterns. One of those flights involved rehydrating a volume of freeze-dried red blood cells for a project led by UofL biology professor Michael Menze. The other two flights involved tests of a more advanced version of the surgical fluid management system that flew aboard SpaceShipTwo. This was the fifth campaign for the team, each involving at least two flights – each including 30 parabolas and their accompanying weightlessness – with investigators aboard to conduct tests during the flights.

In addition to the surgical fluid management system, the astrosurgery team is developing other technology to allow surgical procedures in space, training protocols that would allow non-surgeons to conduct emergency surgery, using robots to assist in those surgeries and 3D printing of recyclable surgical instruments onboard the craft to save space and materials.

The work with Menze and assistant professor of bioengineering Jonathan Kopechek to develop methods for long-term blood preservation using dehydration previously was .

“You cannot imagine the feeling,” Elbasyouni said. “I didn’t sleep at all the night of the flight, I was up watching the feed all night.”

The engineer began working forÌę. in 2012, where he was selected to work with NASA on the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter project, which he did from 2014 to mid-2018 when he completed the flight hardware. He was elated to see it come to fruition in the first flight on April 19.

“Every day I had been waiting for the moment when it was going to fly,” he said. “It was incredibly exciting.”

Ingenuity since has completed two more flights, the latest on April 25.

The 42-year-oldÌęÌęalumnus (Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, 2004; Master of Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2005) also was part of the team that sent the Perseverance spacecraft to Mars in March.

From Palestine to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, it has been a long and sometimes difficult journey for Elbasyouni. Born in Germany, Elbasyouni moved with his parents and three brothers to Palestine at age six.

“One of my first memories was walking to school with a group of kids when suddenly they all ran into a house, and then I saw an Israeli jeep passing by, and I thought, ‘Wow I thought the military was there to protect us.’ It was a very different experience,” he said.

Elbasyouni attended a United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency School from grades one to nine, but often there was no access to school due to strikes or other civil unrest, so much of his early education was self-taught. Elbasyouni said his father, a busy surgeon, urged all of his children to be educated. Of his three brothers, two are electrical engineers and one is an orthopedic surgeon.

After coming to the United States, Elbasyouni went to college in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and the University of Kentucky before financial issues forced him to sit out a year and work odd jobs. Then he discovered UofL’s Speed School of Engineering.

“I always loved Louisville. In fact, I used to cheer for the Cards while at UK,” he said with a laugh.

Elbasyouni said he was impressed with Speed School’s program because it offered a hybrid study of hardware and computer and electrical engineering, something he wanted to pursue.

“When I transferred, I was welcomed with open arms from day one,” he said.

In addition, Speed School helped him financially with a scholarship award after the first year and a work/study job after his bachelor’s degree so he could afford to finish his master’s degree.

Finances were one of many obstacles for Elbasyouni to overcome, coming from a country where the income is a fraction of the United States, he said. Being from a Middle Eastern country unfortunately complicated other matters as well.

“After September 11, I was attacked delivering pizza to some drunk students,” Elbasyouni said. “It also meant it was harder to get a job because companies preferred U.S. citizens, so you had to apply twice as hard to find the right company who was interested in who you really are.”

Elbasyouni has not returned to Palestine since 2000, and last saw his family in 2011 in Germany, where they now reside and he can visit them as travel restrictions become less COVID-strict.

“I went for 11 years without seeing my mom,” he said. “That was tough. She used to cry every day.”

The engineer said he would like to return to visit his home country someday, but travel and the political conditions within the country have made it trickier than it used to be.

“I have good memories of growing up in the olive and orange groves, one reason why I live in Southern California now,” he said.

Coming to Speed School of Engineering in 2002 was a key turning point for Elbasyouni’s successful career path.

“I had incredible mentors there. I remember when I wasn’t even sure how I was going to pay for my master’s and they helped me get that job in the computer department,” he said.

In another case, Elbasyouni said he was struggling to pay tuition and needed $500 to finish the semester, and one of his professors offered to pay it himself.

“It was every single small thing like this,” he said. “I received mentoring and guidance from every professor I had. In my previous college experiences, I had nothing like that. I felt like a number, whereas at UofL I felt like I’m part of a family.”

For budding engineers, Elbasyouni said he believes Speed School offers an excellent path to success: small classes with a lot of hands-on lab experience, the math program which promotes camaraderie and connection with other students early on, and last but definitely not least, the ability to talk to any professor about any issue.

“It’s always an open door,” he said. “They appreciated the fact that you wanted to learn. Speed School really gives you that passion for engineering.”

After graduating from Speed School with his Master’s in Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2005, Elbasyouni worked for a variety of companies as a hardware engineer designing electrical vehicles, including General Electric in Louisville and startup electrical vehicle companies in Boston and California, before he was contracted to design the motor controller and other components of the Mars helicopter. Today, he’s a senior director atÌęÌęin Santa Monica, California, responsible for West Coast operations. The company designs and solves problems for aerospace, commercial aviation and superconductor industries.

In his role at Astrodyne, Elbasyouni also recruits and hires engineers, and that is where Speed School shines, he said, even in comparison to bigger-name engineering programs. For example, Elbasyouni was able to take a senior-level design job himself straight out of college.

“I see engineers from big engineering schools that don’t know how to hold a soldering gun or know the basics. They know a lot of theory, but don’t have enough hands-on experience. These differences in the way a lot of Speed School classes are taught have given me an advantage in the field. There were so many professors who had a big influence on me in so many ways and helped me through my career. I want them to know they’re all part of the accomplishment we achieved on Mars.”

It was at Speed School that Elbasyouni’s philosophy about engineering and life also began to evolve.

“Before, I always wanted to be in that entrepreneurial world but afterwards, I became active in environmental issues and wanted to be a person to try to make as much change as I could in the world,” he said. “It’s why I took the avenue I did exploring alternative energy efficiency. I am proud to have a negative carbon footprint on the planet. It changed my way of looking at life.”

How does Elbasyouni hope to make his mark on the world as an engineer? He said he is already “in process” with his next career step, creating his own startup, and he may work with NASA again in the future. It has always been his goal to own his own company, he says. His ambitions are driven by his desire to change the world.Ìę

“I want to work at things that are going to make the world a better place, providing tools to make it easier for people in underprivileged places,” he said.Ìę“I believe we can change the world by engineering new ways to communicate, utilize the environment, and do everything around us. We are all one, we just don’t realize it. We all want the same things – to enjoy life and live in peace.”

“If cosmic radiation reduces the red blood cell count
 You’re gonna have four people needing blood, and there’s no good way to store it with a freezer or refrigerator during that long trip,” said graduate research assistant Brett Janis. “So being able to stably store it in a dry state but then confidently rehydrate it is critical.”

On their zero-gravity test flight, the researchers found that injecting a bag of dried blood with water and massaging it successfully rehydrated a small amount of blood. Their next experiment, however, will see if the same results can be garnered when handling a larger volume of blood.

“The next step is
 seeing if our hand-mixed method will perform as well if we are now looking at 20 to 30 times the volume, so that we are approaching a unit of packed red blood cells when it is infused into a patient,” said Michael Menze, biology associate professor.

In-flight video provided by ZERO-G.

The work is supported by NASA Kentucky under NASA award number NNX15AR69H.

Check out more about this research:Ìę

The UofL is part of the ground-based team for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) program, which launched in spring 2018 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.Ìę

The mission is to identify Earth-like planets revolving around nearby stars, with the UofL team helping verify results and figuring out the characteristics of the discovered planets.

The program has identified 20-some planets in its first year. AccordingÌę, citing a study in that includes a “rocky super-Earth” and two “sub-Neptunes.”

These three help fill inÌęour understanding of how planets form, the article said, because they’re somewhere in between planets like Earth — rocky and small — andÌęNeptune — gaseous and big.

“There’s kind of a gap in examples between these two,” saidÌęDr. John Kielkopf, a professor of physics and astronomy at UofL and member of the TESS team.

The TESS satellite will search about 85 percent of the sky for planets over two years. The images will be somewhat low-resolution and cover huge sections of sky, so there will be some blending of stars with one another.Ìę

The data and management for the TESS program are led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The ground-based partners, including UofL and its Moore Observatory, in Crestwood, Kentucky, will help check the information collected by the satellite, and expand on it.

“The data come back to us, and we analyze it to measure the transit events precisely, or in some cases to show that the event does not happen, or is mimicked by some other event,” Kielkopf said.Ìę“Our measurements improve on the precision of the satellite, and are used to find the radius of the planets and the exact times at which they pass in front of the star.Ìę

Dr. Karen Collins, who is leading the TESS follow-up program through Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, helped develop the software behind this research as part of her doctoral studies in the department of Physics and Astronomy at UofL. The software she developed is now widely used for studying planet candidates identified by the Kepler satellite and for TESS followup.

In addition to UofL’s Moore Observatory, university researchers and students will work with UofL’s telescopes at the Mt. Lemmon (Arizona) and Mt. Kent (Australia) observatories. The telescopes will use photometry and spectroscopy to measure the brightness of the star and speed of the planet’s orbit, in collaboration with the University of Southern Queensland.

.Ìę

Apollo 11’s mission 50 years ago remains a defining moment in human history and kick started a robust pipeline of space exploration well beyond the moon. Many UofL Cardinals have been on the front lines of that exploration.

Louisville is just over 600 miles from NASA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, and 900 miles from Cape Canaveral, Florida, but the university is closely tied to numerous space-based research projects nonetheless. It of course helps that we have a Department of Physics and Astronomy filled with ambitious researchers like Benne Holwerda, who recently won time with the famous Hubble Space Telescope for research – a coveted award for those chasing the biggest questions posed by the universe.

Holwerda is using this opportunity to dive into three research projects that study the role of dust in the energy of two small galaxies.

His work is simply the tip of the iceberg of UofL’s space research. There’s also the work of Dr. Timothy Dowling, director of the atmospheric science program. Dowling, the only planetary scientist in Kentucky, has researched the length of a day on Saturn – a question that has stumped scientists for hundreds of years. Using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to measure waves in the atmosphere, Dowling and his team came up with 10 hours and 34 minutes. Another group of NASA researchers recently confirmed the accuracy of that timeframe.

“To have that confirmed is icing on the cake,” Dowling .

Dowling has also served as a researcher for the NASA Voyager II mission that photographed and mapped the surface of Uranus, and is the lead architect for theÌęÌęused by NASA and researchers around the world to model the weather on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Ìę

Currently, he is currently working on a new project involving Mars. As part of this research, Dowling received $2 million in (non-UofL-related) grants over 30 years to study planetary atmospheric dynamics. His latest research explores cubesats to monitor weather and forecasting on Mars to support the future boots-on-the-ground astronauts to the planet.

“The field of operational forecasting for Mars is just emerging, and will grow as we get closer to putting astronauts on the surface. This is all just in the early planning stages,” Dowling said.

Speaking of the forecast, Dowling’s colleague, , is working with Clemson atmospheric physics professor Jens Oberheide on a NASA-funded project to better predict the weather in space. The research is important, according to Du-Caines, to more clearly predict when storms or bad weather above the earth’s atmosphere might impact GPS, power grids, suborbital flights or satellites.

Gerry Williger, associate professor of physics and astronomy, has been on sabbatical for the past year conducting research at Konkoly Observatory in Budapest Hungary. His work is supported by a Fulbright Research Fellowship and examines the formation of stars in a distant galaxy.

Also, the University of Louisville joined a ground-based team for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) program last year. The goal is to identify 50 Earth-like planets revolving around nearby stars.

The satellite will search about 85 percent of the sky for planets over two years. The images will be somewhat low-resolution and cover huge sections of sky, so there will be some blurring of stars.

“There will be millions of stars observed by TESS,” said Dr. John Kielkopf, professor of Physics and Astronomy. “It will be a matter of which ones have planets that we can detect.”

The ground-based partners include University of Southern Queensland in the Southern hemisphere, and in the Northern hemisphere, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and .

Students and alums shoot for the stars

Faculty aren’t the only Cardinals shooting for the stars. at UofL studying gravitational lensing around galaxies. She is working on a two-year grant from NASA Kentucky alongside two co-principle investigators at UofL – Kielkopf and Holwerda. She also has support from Dr. Lou Strolger, who works for the NASA-related agency called Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

“By observing the gravitational lensing phenomenon, we can make significant progress on the hunt for dark matter, and improve our understanding on the formation of galaxies like our own,” she said.ÌęÌę

, a double major in Physics and Atmospheric Science, landed an internship at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, last summer. There she worked with the TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) Student Collaboration analyzing and calibrating data for the TEMPO satellite.

Carrico has also been selected for the NASA Pathways program through NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. This will allow her to complete three internship rotations with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, with the possibility of transitioning directly to employment with NASA upon graduation. Her internships will take her into different areas of the work taking place at the Center, increasing the breadth of her training.Ìę

“The Pathways spot still feels very surreal to me. It is something that I have worked very hard for and I am really excited for the opportunity,” said Carrico. “I was always interested in NASA and saw it as a place where there was no limit to what I could do or explore. After my first year at UofL, I started to research NASA internships more because it seemed like a great way for me to gain valuable experience and explore new areas of my studies.”

UofL’s proximity to space extends beyond NASA’s public sector work and into Elon Musk’s much-publicized SpaceX private sector work. Last year, alum Austin Marshall, 12S, 13GS, was part of the SpaceX team that launched Falcon Heavy — and Musk’s Tesla — into space.

Marshall, who graduated from the J.B. Speed School of Engineering with an industrial engineering degree, is the mate­rial flow planner for SpaceX. His job is essentially logistics, making sure all the parts and pieces needed to build the rockets are right where they should be, when they should be there.

“Right now building a rocket takes a long time,” Marshall said. “SpaceX wants to make it a really quick process, like an assembly line. 
 Our number one goal for the year is to put people in space.”

UofL’s space odysseys are certainly nothing new. The “To boldly go 
” cover of UofL Magazine in the summer of 2004 highlighted UofL’s space work, noting that UofL scientists have been working with NASA for decades. That was the same year Kentucky and NASA established a partnership to develop new technologies to help bolster the moon/Mars initiative.

Celebrating Apollo 11

We’d be remiss with all this space talk if we didn’t mention the christened on the northwest corner of the Belknap campus in 2001. The original Rauch Memorial Planetarium opened in 1962 and served the community for 36 years until it was razed in 1998.

The Gheens Science Hall & Rauch Planetarium will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing with free screenings of “Apollo 11” July 20. The documentary will be shown at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. No reservations are needed.

Although only 6 years old and getting ready to enter first grade at St. Mary of the Knobs Catholic school in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, Olivia was given special permission to attend the camp that is designed for rising 2nd to 4th graders. That is because despite her young age, Olivia is already so passionate about becoming an astronaut that she is learning to speak Russian so she can communicate on the International Space Station and plays soccer and field hockey to ensure she will have the necessary physical stamina.

The Belicove family, transplants to New Albany, Indiana, from Rochester, New York, discovered Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium soon after moving to the area. Olivia had been enamored with all things space since she was just 4 years old and watched the “Ready Jet Go!” PBS Kids show that introduces children aged 3 to 8 to space, earth science and technology.

Olivia became a frequent GSH&RP visitor, using money she received at Christmas to buy a family membership. When Olivia went to the Women’s History Month keynote presentation at the planetarium in March, she met the speaker, Sophia Mitchell, a NASA aerospace engineer and Louisville native. Sophia spent a great deal of time talking with Olivia, encouraging her to pursue her dreams. She gave Olivia her email address in order to stay in touch.

Olivia is using the children’s book “Astronaut’s Handbook” to plot her course. Rather than cartoons, she prefers to watch major space events on television such as NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson making her record-breaking spacewalk or the SpaceX Dragon docking with the ISS in the wee hours of the morning. When the family asked Olivia where she wanted to go on vacation this year, rather than opting for Disney World, she chose the Kennedy Space Center, where she got to meet astronauts and watch lots of space videos.

During camp this summer, Olivia bonded with camp leader and planetarium educator Brenna Ausbrooks, who has her bachelor of science degree in physics with an emphasis in astrophysics, a master of arts degree in teaching in high school physics and is working on her doctorate in curriculum development.

“Next summer cannot come soon enough for Olivia to go to camp again,” said Olivia’s mom, Jamie.

The author is Paula McGuffey, assistant director of GSH&RP.

John Caruso and Kathy Carter are colleagues in the department of health and sport sciences. They’ve completed one preliminary study using the Impulse rapid exercise machine that simulates the weightlessness of space. They found that working out in this machine suppressed the breakdown in a person’s heel bone, the first to show signs of density loss among astronauts.

“This is potentially big news for NASA” Caruso said.

The UofL faculty members are also launching another study of an astronaut’s diet. NASA has traditionally prescribed a Paleo diet but Caruso and Carter think a diet that’s heavier in protein and carbohydrates might be better for the athletic astronauts who are doing rigorous workouts every day.

“Changing diet is tough for anybody, but especially when you’re up in space and really want comfort food. It’s going to be hard to convince them this is what they really need to do,” Carter said. “But if we can show it’s going to make them healthier on their return to earth, that’s going to be a big motivator.” Ìę

Hear more about Caruso and Carter’s research in their interview on ““