Space

5 upcoming trips to the moon and how CU �ֲ��ý scientists are involved

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:49:24 +0000

5 upcoming trips to the moon and how CU �ֲ��ý scientists are involved Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:49

Selfie taken by "Athena," a lunar lander built by the company Intuitive Machines, which launched for the moon Feb. 26. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)

Daniel Strain

Selfie taken by "Athena," a lunar lander built by the company Intuitive Machines, which launched for the moon Feb. 26. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)

Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 4, 2025, and has been updated for International Moon Day 2026.

The next few years will be a busy time for CU �ֲ��ý’s “lunatics”—what astrophysicist Jack Burns calls scientists who have a passion for exploring the moon.

Paul Hayne

Jack Burns

Researchers at the university, including Burns and planetary scientist Paul Hayne, are taking part in four upcoming lander missions through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. CLPS is an ambitious effort to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface by landing spacecraft built by private companies on the moon.

The new missions will explore everything from volcanoes on the moon’s surface to signals washing through our galaxy from the dawn of the universe.

“When we last landed on the moon during the Apollo era, the sorts of experiments that could be done were limited based on the technology they had at the time,” said Hayne, a scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU �ֲ��ý. “For the first time, we have the opportunity to deploy many different kinds of instruments on the lunar surface to make these up-close measurements.”

The new CLPS deliveries follow up on a successful experiment called Radio wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photo Electron Sheath (ROLSES). This instrument landed on the moon last year aboard a lander named Odysseus built by the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines. Burns was a co-investigator on ROLSES, which recorded radio waves originating from Earth-based transmitters and from the Milky Way Galaxy.

For Burns, a professor emeritus in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS), the event was a long time in the making. The moon, he said, is a scientific laboratory like no other.

“I heard ‘no’ for decades. ‘We can’t go back to the moon. It’s a fantasy,’” Burns said. “But the science was so exciting and important that we stuck with it. And today, it’s happening.”

Here is a sampling of CU �ֲ��ý’s upcoming trips to the moon:

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). (Courtesy photo/NASA)

Protecting astronauts from electric discharges

After ROLSES, the next moon experiment is positively electric. It will head to the moon’s Schrödinger Basin in the next decade—a nearly 200-mile-wide impact crater on the lunar far side, or the part of the moon that never faces Earth.

From there, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Lite (LuSEE-Lite) instrument measure electrostatic forces just above the moon’s surface—the same forces that make your socks stick together in the dryer. Sudden changes in electric charge (lightning-like discharges) could pose risks to future astronauts on the moon. LuSEE-Lite consists of a single electric field sensor that will stick up more than 20 feet from the lander, as well as a suite of high- and low-frequency magnetic field sensors.

The instrument was constructed and will be operated with funding from NASA and will be delivered to the lunar surface on a future NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission. UC Berkeley is the lead with CU �ֲ��ý providing scientific expertise and key instrument hardware (Burns and David Malaspina, CU �ֲ��ý/LASP).

Tuning in to the ancient universe

A similar instrument known as LuSEE-Night will build on data from LuSEE-Lite, with a dark twist. It’s flying aboard Blue Ghost 2, the second lunar lander from the company Firefly Aerospace, which operates out of Cedar Park, Texas. (Firefly’s first lander successfully landed on the moon March 2, 2025.)

LuSEE-Night is a pathfinder radio telescope on the lunar far-side designed to explore a frequency range below 50MHz that is inaccessible from the Earth.

Blue Ghost 2 will touch down on the moon’s far side and observe radio waves emanating from space far beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. Burns noted that these faint signals could give scientists clues to a hidden period in the history of the cosmos called the “Dark Ages”—a time just before the first stars and galaxies formed in the early universe about 100 million years after the Big Bang.

Burns explained that the moon’s far side provides scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to view these signals, in part because the region is shielded from the radio noise of technology on Earth. LuSEE-Night is also led by UC Berkeley.

“We are carrying 40 kilograms, or 88 pounds, of batteries with us, which will allow LuSEE-Night to potentially survive on the lunar surface for two years and operate at night,” Burns said. “That’s the quiet time on the moon because there’s no noise coming from the sun.”

The LuSEE-Night instrument was constructed and is operated with funding from NASA and U.S. Department of Energy. It will be delivered to the surface of the moon as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission CS-3, operated by Firefly Aerospace. Calibration signals will be provided by Firefly Aerospace as NASA CLPS mission CS-4.

Artist's depiction of an orbital vehicle deploying a Blue Ghost lander. (Credit: Firefly Aeropsace)

The moon's mysterious Gruithuisen Domes as seen from space. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Getting to the bottom of the domes

Firefly’s next lander boasts not one but two instruments with involvement from CU �ֲ��ý scientists.

Blue Ghost 3 will head for a puzzling region of the moon known as the Gruithuisen Domes. These rounded mountains rise to nearly a mile above the moon’s surface and were formed by lava rich in silica.

Hayne explained that on Earth, silica tends to only appear in large quantities in lava formed by the churn of plate tectonics. What these silica-rich features are doing on the moon, which has no continental plates, remains a mystery.

The planetary scientist joined a team led by the University of Central Florida that is trying to answer that question. A rover known as the Lunar Vulkan Imaging Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) will detach from the Blue Ghost lander and roll around this region of the moon.

Lena Heffern, formerly a systems engineer at LASP, and Margaret Landis, a former research scientist at LASP, are co-investigators on the Lunar-VISE mission. Hayne is leading work on an infrared camera that will sit on the lander and help to identify the nearby minerals.

Additionally, LASP is performing the instrument operations and building the science data center and data processing software for the mission, and recent LASP doctoral graduate Heshani Pieris is leading the calibration of one of the Lunar-VISE camera systems.

"It's an exciting opportunity to combine measurement techniques from the Lunar-VISE instruments to understand the evolution and history of lunar volcanism at this unusual location," Landis said.

The Space and Mission Systems division of the Colorado-based company BAE Systems, formerly Ball Aerospace, is building Lunar-VISE’s science instruments.

Burns and his colleagues, meanwhile, are getting a second moon shot of sorts.

The astrophysicist previously participated in the ROLSES experiment led by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. When the Odysseus spacecraft touched down on the moon, it tipped onto its side, which limited how much data the ROLSES team was able to collect.

Now, the same researchers are launching ROLSES 2, which boasts a few improvements on the original design. The new instrument will include four antennas and, like LuSEE-Night, will collect radio waves—in this case, not just from the Milky Way but also from our own planet, moon and sun.

Burns explained that radio waves coming from Earth can tell scientists a lot about the magnetic fields that surround the globe. He hopes that the team’s data will help scientists search for potentially habitable planets beyond Earth’s solar system, what scientists call “exoplanets.”

“We know that on Earth, the magnetic field is essential for life because it shields us from dangerous radiation in space,” he said. “If we can learn more about these radio emissions, we may one day be able to measure the strength of magnetic fields around exoplanets.”

ROLSES 2 is also led by NASA Goddard in close partnership with CU �ֲ��ý.

Scaling mountains

Hayne will take part in one more CLPS mission set to launch in 2027. Intuitive Machines’ fourth and final planned lander, which doesn’t yet have a name borrowed from Greek mythology, is heading for the region around Mons Mouton. It is one of the tallest mountains on the moon, rising to nearly 20,000 feet above the surface.

The lander will carry a camera called the Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System (L-CIRiS), which is similar to the camera flying aboard Blue Ghost 3. (L-CIRiS was also built by BAE Systems). The device will measure temperatures across the lunar surface, including around the shadows tucked behind boulders and inside craters. Those images could help future space explorers know where to look for water frozen into ice on the moon.

“These are measurements we’ve never been able to make before,” Hayne said.

After decades of waiting, Burns is eager for what the next few years will hold.

“This is something I tell my students—to never accept ‘no,’” he said.

The L-CIRiS instrument will map out temperatures on the moon's surface near the lunar South Pole. (Credit: LASP)

Instruments designed and built by LASP researchers have been selected for development for a future Artemis mission. The instruments will characterize the lunar dust and plasma environment around the landing site near the moon’s South Pole, seen here in a mosaic of images taken by the Clementine mission. The lunar South Pole has a large, permanently shadowed region, which is of particular interest to scientists investigating the presence of volatiles, including water ice, trapped in the lunar regolith. (Credit: NASA)

Tackling troublesome lunar dust

Instruments designed and built by LASP researchers have been selected for development for a future Artemis mission. The DUSTER (Dust and plaSma environmenT survEyoR) lunar rover will measure the plasma and dust environment at the surface of the moon to quantify the charging and lofting of fine lunar dust.

Understanding and predicting dust behavior is critical to future human activity on the moon because the dust adheres to nearly every surface—creating challenges for exploration. The lunar dust can damage mechanical joints, cover solar panels and must be kept out of human-occupied spaces because it is extremely hazardous to breathe.

LASP's Xu Wang is the principal investigator, and Mihaly Horanyi is the deputy PI. The instrument leads are Wang and Malaspina. The rover is being provided by Lunar Outpost, based in Golden, Colorado.

Beyond the story

Our space impact by the numbers:

20 CU �ֲ��ý-affiliated astronauts
No. 1 public university recipient of NASA research awards
Only academic research institute in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system

Follow CU �ֲ��ý on LinkedIn

Researchers will explore everything from volcanoes on the moon's surface to signals washing through our galaxy from the dawn of the universe.

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NASA selects LASP mission to study how Earth and space weather connect

Greg B Swenson — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:48:57 +0000

NASA selects LASP mission to study how Earth and space weather connect Greg B Swenson Thu, 06/18/2026 - 14:48

NASA has selected a mission concept led by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) to investigate the complex system of space weather that surrounds Earth, and how this system connects to our planet’s atmosphere.

This science mission will improve prediction capabilities for understanding the impacts of space weather on technology, such as GPS and low Earth orbit satellites—as well as protecting astronauts in space—and will benefit society as a whole.

NASA announced that the DAPHNE (Dynamic Atmosphere-Ionosphere Explorer) mission will enter Phase B of development, which includes planning and design for flight and mission operations.

Led by LASP researcher Aimee Merkel, DAPHNE will use identical twin satellites to study how changes in Earth’s lower atmosphere influence the upper atmosphere, where space weather is manifested. This mission has been called out as a top priority in the most recent Heliophysics Decadal Survey from the National Academy of Sciences.

"This mission has wide-ranging implications for human spaceflight and technology," said CU �ֲ��ý Chancellor Justin Schwartz. "LASP and CU �ֲ��ý are honored to partner with NASA on such an important flight project for our country."

Each spacecraft will be equipped with three remote-sensing instruments: MIGHTI, FUVI, and PLATO. Together, the instruments will provide coordinated, multi-point measurements of neutral winds, temperature and composition in very low Earth orbit, a region where Earth’s atmosphere transitions into charged particles.

In this thin shell that surrounds our planet, the atmosphere is in constant motion, shaped by solar activity and changes in the lower atmosphere. The observations from the DAPHNE mission will incorporate data from the lower atmospheric region to advance space weather predictive capabilities.

"Scientists have long studied how space weather affects Earth, but much less is known about how Earth's lower atmosphere affects the upper atmosphere and space weather," said Merkel. "DAPHNE will fill this major gap in scientific understanding and help answer long-standing questions about how Earth interacts with our sun. The DAPHNE team is very excited to get started, and we thank NASA for the opportunity to investigate this region that is critical to modern technology and human spaceflight."

The mission is a low-risk, high-heritage, high-data-return investigation that leverages a diverse team of experts in space science research, mission management and engineering.

The mission will be subject to a confirmation review in 2027, which will assess the progress of the mission and the availability of funds. If confirmed, the total estimated cost of the mission, excluding launch, will not exceed $250 million in fiscal year 2023 dollars, with a mission launch date of no earlier than 2029.

Major partners for the mission include BAE Systems in �ֲ��ý, Colorado, and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

The DAPHNE mission was proposed as a concept study in response to the DYNAMIC (Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling) mission announcement of opportunity.

Funding and management oversight for this mission is provided by the Solar Terrestrial Probes program at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA has selected a mission concept led by CU �ֲ��ý's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics to investigate the complex system of space weather that surrounds Earth—and how this system connects to our planet's atmosphere.

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Artist’s rendition of the DAPHNE mission concept. The coloring represents auroras and atmospheric waves. Credit: LASP/Mary Tostanoski

NASA says farewell to MAVEN Mars mission

Megan M Rogers — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:53:37 +0000

NASA says farewell to MAVEN Mars mission Megan M Rogers Wed, 06/03/2026 - 07:53

NASA

The first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), has ended after more than 11 years in orbit at Mars and a decade beyond its primary, one-year mission. The spacecraft was heard last on Dec. 6, when it experienced an unexpected loss of signal after it passed behind the Red Planet.

The MAVEN mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. The mission’s principal investigator is based at CU �ֲ��ý's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Read the full story from NASA.

The first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution has ended after more than 11 years in orbit and a decade beyond its primary, one-year mission. The MAVEN mission's principal investigator is based at CU �ֲ��ý's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

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Using aerospace technology to study glacier melt in Greenland

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:40:32 +0000

Using aerospace technology to study glacier melt in Greenland Megan M Rogers Tue, 04/14/2026 - 07:40

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Alia Khan is integrating field-based biogeochemical analysis with NASA's next-generation satellite sensors to quantify how biological algae blooms, mineral dust and wildfire smoke are darkening the Greenland Ice Sheet and accelerating its melt.

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Water on the moon? New study narrows down the most likely locations

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Water on the moon? New study narrows down the most likely locations Daniel William… Tue, 04/07/2026 - 03:00

Daniel Strain

Shadows stretch around Malapert Massif, a mountain near the moon's South Pole. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Water likely accumulated on the moon slowly over billions of years, rather than during one big event, according to a new study by an international team of scientists

The researchers, including Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the �ֲ��ý, published their findings April 7 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The study gets at a lunar mystery that has puzzled scientists for decades. Observations from NASA missions and other sources have provided tantalizing hints that water might be plentiful on the moon. It gathers as ice in the deep, dark craters around the moon’s South Pole.

But how that ice got there, or why it seems to exist in some craters but not others, hasn’t been clear.

The locations of ice, in blue, at the moon's South Pole, left, and North Pole, right, as detected by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. (Credit: NASA)

The team’s findings can’t pin down the exact source, but they rule out a few possibilities—including water arriving on the moon at once on a humongous comet crashing into the lunar surface.

“It looks like the moon’s oldest craters also have the most ice,” said Hayne, an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences. “That implies the moon has been accumulating water more or less continuously for as much as 3 or 3.5 billion years.”

Water on the moon would be a goldmine for astronauts, Hayne said. Future lunar explorers could mine ice for drinking water, or even to produce rocket fuel by splitting apart the hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

“Finding water beyond Earth in liquid and usable form is one of the most important challenges in astronomy,” said Oded Aharonson, lead author of the study and a planetary scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Permanent lunar shadows

Hayne cited several possible sources for the moon’s water: Volcanoes in the distant past may have transported water from deep inside the moon to its surface. Water may have also traveled to the moon on comets or asteroids, and it may have arrived via solar wind—a steady stream of charged particles that flows away from the sun and into the solar system.

“Through the solar wind, a constant stream of hydrogen bombards the moon, and some of that hydrogen can be converted to water on the lunar surface,” Hayne said.

Regardless of where the water came from, scientists like Hayne are fairly certain that ice has built up in what are known as “cold traps”—craters on the lunar surface that exist in permanent shadow and haven’t seen the sun for, in some cases, billions of years.

Observations from the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument on the NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, found evidence of what might be ice in some of those craters.

“What’s clear is that the ice has a patchy distribution,” Hayne said. “It’s not concentrated in the same quantities in every crater. And there was no great explanation for that.”

Craters near the moon's South Pole as seen by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. New research suggests that Haworth Crater might be an especially good spot to look for ice. (Credit: NASA)

Ice boxes

Hayne, Aharonson and co-author Norbert Schörghofer wanted to come up with an explanation—and to do that, they hit rewind on the moon’s history. Aharaonson led the work as a visiting scholar at CU �ֲ��ý in 2025. The team used lunar surface temperature data from LRO’s Diviner instrument and a series of computer simulations to estimate the evolution of craters on the lunar surface.

Paul Hayne

Hayne noted that the moon didn’t always sit in the orientation we know today. Instead, its tilt relative to Earth has shifted over time. As a result, craters that are in shadow today may not always have been in shadow.

Drawing on their simulations, the researchers came up with a list of the moon’s cold traps that have been darkest the longest.

The team also discovered something intriguing: The moon’s oldest and darkest craters are also where LAMP had seen the greatest signs of ice.

The team’s results may give astronauts hints about where to go looking for water. The moon’s Haworth Crater, which sits near the South Pole, for example, has likely been in shadow for more than 3 billion years. It’s a top candidate for storing a lot of ice, Hayne said.

The planetary scientist said that researchers need to collect more detailed observations of craters on the moon that may harbor ice. He’s developing a new instrument to do just that called the Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System (L-CIRiS), which NASA plans to deploy near the moon’s South Pole in late 2027

“Ultimately, the question of the source of the moon’s water will only be solved by sample analysis,” he said. “We will need to go to the moon to analyze those samples there or find ways to bring them from the moon back to Earth.”

Astronauts on the moon could mine ice for drinking water or to make rocket fuel. A new study pinpoints a few cold, dark craters where water likely accumulated over billions of years.

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Astronauts are going back to the moon. Planetary scientist talks about what we can learn

Julie Poppen — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:21:24 +0000

Astronauts are going back to the moon. Planetary scientist talks about what we can learn Julie Poppen Fri, 04/03/2026 - 10:21

A rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft rolls out for the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Credit: NASA)

Editor's note: Artemis II successfully launched on April 1, 2026.
Article originally published: Feb. 2, 2026.

Soon, four U.S. astronauts are slated to begin their history-making journey to the moon and back. The astronauts, the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission, will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as Wednesday, April 1. From there, they’ll fly on the Orion spacecraft to the moon, circle it from high above, then return to Earth.

Artemis II marks the first time that humans will leave the safety of Earth’s orbit since the Apollo 17 mission of 1972. It’s a precursor to Artemis IV, which plans to land humans on the lunar surface once more.

Read more:

Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU �ֲ��ý, has spent years exploring the moon’s mysteries. He’s investigated, for example, whether the cold, dark craters that dot the lunar surface might harbor stores of ice—which astronauts could mine for drinking water or to make rocket fuel, splitting apart the molecules within to create hydrogen gas.

CU �ֲ��ý Today spoke with the lunar researcher about the biggest unanswered questions about the moon, and what it can tell us about humanity’s place in the solar system.

“I'm really interested in the terra incognita of the moon, the places that are so dark and inaccessible that they're very difficult to explore,” said Hayne, an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU �ֲ��ý.

Why is it important for humans to go back to the moon?

The moon records what's going on in our space environment throughout its history. Unlike Earth, which has experienced weather and erosion that has removed the history of asteroid and comet impacts, the moon preserves all that history over billions of years.

The moon, in a way, is the history book of the solar system.

Paul Hayne

Photo of the Orion spacecraft during NASA's Artemis I mission in 2022, which traveled to the moon and back without astronauts aboard. (Credit: NASA)

How will Artemis be different than the Apollo missions?

Artemis is an opportunity to go to one of the least explored places on the moon, near the moon's South Pole where there are deep, dark shadows inside craters that have never seen sunlight—at least not in the last several billion years.

Because of those dark shadows, the craters are extremely cold. Those permanently shadowed regions are the solar system's garbage collector. Anything that gets collected there doesn't go anywhere for billions of years. This is a treasure trove, scientifically, of things like water and carbon that that we can go and access.

Humans have been studying the moon for a long time. Is there still a lot we don’t know about it?

One of the big-picture science questions we want to answer through the Artemis program is: How did the moon form? This gets at the heart of some of the questions we have about the whole solar system: How did Earth form? How did the planets form?

We think that the moon formed through a giant impact—a Mars-sized protoplanet that collided with Earth very early in its history. It may have stripped off a huge chunk of Earth's interior, and then that material coalesced into what became the moon.

There are some big questions about that history that we need samples from different parts of the moon to answer.

How does your own research connect to Artemis?

A key aspect of the Artemis program is the synergy between science and exploration. NASA is not only sending astronauts through the Artemis II, III and IV missions and beyond, but it’s also sending precursor missions that are using robotic explorers in the form of landers and rovers carrying scientific experiments.

The scientific experiments that I'm involved with include things like searching for ice at the poles of the moon. We have an infrared camera developed here in �ֲ��ý, Colorado, that will be deployed near the moon's South Pole. It's called the Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System, or L-CIRiS. This is a heat-sensing camera that will look for the coldest places where we might identify the conditions for ice to exist.

How is this research critical for humans actually staying on the moon?

The moon, without an atmosphere, has extreme temperature variations—from higher than boiling temperatures in the sunlight to just 15 or 20 degrees above absolute zero in the deep, dark shadows. These are extreme temperature ranges that anything on the surface, including astronauts, will have to contend with. We’re studying the thermal environments by using instruments like L-CIRiS.

Why does space exploration inspire you?

It really takes the combined efforts of our whole society to do these kinds of things. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ‘We choose to go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard.’

Doing so demonstrates that we do have the ability as a society to do things that are challenging—not just for the astronauts, but also for all the people, supporting them in this kind of grand project. I think that shows that we can do other hard things as a society.

CU �ֲ��ý Today regularly publishes Q&As on news topics through the lens of scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission launched for the moon on April 1. CU �ֲ��ý researcher Paul Hayne talks about why it's important for humans to return to the moon—and search for water in its shadowy craters.

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NASA selects Atmospheric Oxygen CubeSat mission for development

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:57:26 +0000

NASA selects Atmospheric Oxygen CubeSat mission for development Megan M Rogers Fri, 04/03/2026 - 08:57

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

NASA has selected the Atmospheric Oxygen CubeSat mission—led by LASP—for development, awarding an $8.2 million grant to the mission, which will investigate the region from 50 to 75 miles above Earth's surface. This is a critical but understudied boundary between the atmosphere and space, where conditions can influence satellite operations, communication systems and navigation technologies.

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Planetary scientist Paul Hayne discusses historic mission

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:33:08 +0000

Planetary scientist Paul Hayne discusses historic mission Megan M Rogers Thu, 04/02/2026 - 14:33

On April 1, NASA's Artemis II blasted off on the first mission to the moon in over 50 years. Planetary scientists at LASP and the College of Arts and Sciences are supporting the Artemis program by studying the moon's extreme thermal environments, like the shadowy, cold craters in the moon's South Pole. Hear more from Paul Hayne.

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Trio of CubeSats is a cross-campus collaboration

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:37:17 +0000

Trio of CubeSats is a cross-campus collaboration Megan M Rogers Thu, 04/02/2026 - 11:37

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

The teams of three CubeSat missions include more than 60 students—reflecting strong cross‑campus partnerships that will continue through launch and operations.

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NASA names Paul Hayne to Artemis geology team

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:01:36 +0000

NASA names Paul Hayne to Artemis geology team Megan M Rogers Tue, 03/31/2026 - 12:01

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

Paul Hayne, of LASP, has been selected by NASA to join the agency's first Artemis lunar surface science team as a participating scientist. Hayne is one of 10 scientists selected from a highly competitive pool.

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Space

5 upcoming trips to the moon and how CU �ֲ��ý scientists are involved

Protecting astronauts from electric discharges

Tuning in to the ancient universe

Getting to the bottom of the domes

Scaling mountains

Tackling troublesome lunar dust

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Why is it important for humans to go back to the moon?

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How does your own research connect to Artemis?

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5 upcoming trips to the moon and how CU �ֲ��ý scientists are involved