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Bolstering its longstanding collaboration with NASA, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder today enacted a collaborative Space Act Agreement with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The agreement will advance research and modeling in the critical field of space weather.

This formal agreement, which extends NASA and LASP’s extensive history of joint space science and exploration, expands the depth and breadth of space weather activities for our nation’s benefit. Space weather refers to conditions in space—typically driven by the sun’s activity—that can affect humans and technology. Space weather is responsible for the aurora, and intense events can harm spacecraft, astronauts and essential technology on Earth.

“Space weather touches all aspects of life, from our power grid to space-based assets that are susceptible to space weather events,” said Makenzie Lystrup, director of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was a postdoc at LASP earlier in her career. “This agreement formalizes a longstanding collaboration with LASP essential to expanding space weather applications that protect ground- and space-based assets, not to mention our astronauts preparing to explore deeper into space to the moon and beyond.”

Goddard Space Center Director Makenzie Lystrup, LASP Director Dan Baker and Congressman Joe Neguse. Photos by Casey Cass/CU Boulder.

The agreement, which was formalized at a ceremonial signing in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences building, calls for a more formal and robust framework to expand space weather research in several key areas, including:

• Maturating and miniaturizating of instruments for space weather research
• Incorporating space weather instrumentation and packages as hosted payloads on satellites
• Exploring joint work in “Space Weather Research to Operations” activities
• Addressing key aspects of space weather policy
• Defining best practices for mission proposal development

“We have had a long and highly productive partnership with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in all areas of space exploration,” said LASP Director Daniel Baker. “It is now an honor for LASP to collaborate with the world’s largest Earth and space science research organization to advance our nation’s space weather and heliophysics capabilities. This agreement offers new opportunities to learn from our overlapping space weather expertise and to leverage scientific research using small satellites.”

Also innolved in the ceremony was Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District. Other members of NASA Goddard’s leadership team also in attendance were Deputy Center Director Cynthia Simmons, Director of Sciences and Exploration Christa Peters-Lidard, Director of Engineering and Technology Tom McCarthy and Director of Flight Projects Cathy Richardson. CU Boulder leaders in attendance included Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Dean of the Institutes Massimo Ruzzene and Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science Keith Molenaar. 

LASP has a long and successful record of designing and building instruments to measure the sun’s energy output to improve societal understanding of solar storms and their effects on Earth—and to eventually predict them. The laboratory’s ultraviolet instruments have reliably gathered data on many NASA missions, from Mariner 6 to the ongoing GOLD mission; LASP’s electric field and energetic particle instruments have helped unravel fundamental space plasma phenomena at the heart of space weather events; and the laboratory was recently selected to build the AETHER instrument for NASA’s upcoming Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission. AETHER will help develop the capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space to protect life and society—and to safeguard human and robotic activities at and beyond Earth.

LASP also manages numerous data centers and datasets that are crucial for advancing space weather research. These are available through the LASP-operated Space Weather Portal, part of CU Boulder’s Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center.

CU Boulder is the number one public university recipient of NASA research funding. LASP is at the forefront of solar, planetary and space physics research; climate and space-weather monitoring; and the search for evidence of habitable worlds, all of which match perfectly with Goddard’s mission portfolio and leadership in heliophysics research.

Goddard is NASA’s premier space flight complex and home to the nation’s largest organization of scientists, engineers and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study Earth, the sun, our solar system and the universe.