The New York Space Grant News

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1 The New York Space Grant News Newsletter of the New York NASA Space Grant Consortium Fall 2008 Supporting education and research in space-related fields through fellowships, internships, outreach, and corporate partnerships NASA / New York Space Grant Consortium Lead Institution: Cornell University Affiliates: Alfred University Barnard College City College of New York, CUNY Clarkson University Colgate University Columbia University Lockheed Martin Manhattan College Medgar Evers College, CUNY Polytechnic University Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rochester Institute of Technology Sciencenter SUNY Buffalo SUNY Geneseo SUNY Stony Brook Syracuse University Union College University of Rochester York College, CUNY Greetings Congress in its wisdom some 20 years ago created the National Space Grant Program to enhance educational opportunities in science, math and engineering across the United States. In doing so, Congress assured to develop the future workforce our country needs to keep our preeminent place in space sciences and aeronautics. Appropriately, NASA was chosen to administer the Space Grant Program for all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The New York Space Grant (NYSG) Consortium tries to reach all corners of the state with the Space Grant mission. Our consortium has more than 20 members with the recent addition of Alfred University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Union College, and the University of Rochester. Many diverse programs are conducted in NYSG institutions that involve faculty members and their students. In this newsletter you will read about a few such programs, such as Stony Brook s minority participation program with students studying atmospheric physics and biomedical engineering, Medgar Evers College s balloon science program in which minority students monitor ozone profiles, Cornell students building nanosatellites ready for launch into space, and a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate student investigating the destruction of galaxies due to gravitational forces. One of our very successful programs is to support New York students research at NASA centers. This summer 13 such students are working at Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Kennedy Space Center, and Glenn Research Center, among others. In addition, more than 60 students are performing summer research at NYSG institutions on NASA-related projects. These and many other projects supported by NYSG are preparing young women and men to join the future NASA and technologic workforce. It appears that Congress s wisdom to establish the National Space Grant Program has been a resounding success. Yervant Terzian Director

2 Rensselaer Students Map the Destruction of a Galaxy Students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) are working on the cutting edge of astronomy and computer science, reasearching how gravity from our Milky Way galaxy influences stars from a smaller nearby galaxy. You can help by volunteering your idle computer time to process data for the Milkyway@home project. The Milky Way galaxy is not as simple as we once thought. Many clumps of stars have been found in its outer reaches, indicating that it formed from the merging of smaller galaxies over the age of the Universe. Even today, small galaxies that come too close to the center of the Milky Way are ripped apart by gravity, leaving long stream-like distributions of stars around the galaxy. One of the most prominent is the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, whose tidal streams stretch 360 around the sky. Through the study of these streams, we hope to learn more about how galaxies form and understand the distribution of dark matter. We cannot see dark matter directly; it can only be studied by observing its effect on starlight that we can see. I began working on a project to characterize the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy tidal debris five years ago, as an undergraduate student. Because I was awarded a NASA/NY Space Grant fellowship in 2004, I was able to enter the Multidisciplinary Science PhD program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to continue my work on the border between astronomy and computer science. The Space Grant has supported me for three of my eight semesters in graduate school, in addition to helping fund two other graduate and two undergraduate students working on software for this analysis. Our project has recently produced its first results. We created a computer algorithm to analyze large amounts of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to trace the Sagittarius tidal debris across the sky. We determined the position, orientation, width, and number of stars within each segment of the tidal stream. We developed a method to separate the structure of the stars within the stream from the background of other Milky Way stars so the spatial distribution of the stream stars could be compared more easily with simulations. The algorithm requires a large amount of computational resources. To accommodate this need, we collaborated with a group of computer scientists who helped us parallelize the code. Furthermore, we enlisted a volunteer computing The stars in the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy are being spread all around the Milky Way. In the illustration above, a galaxy like the Milky Way is shown in yellow with the Sun in green. The simulated positions of stars pulled away from the smaller dwarf galaxy by the Milky Way s gravity are in white. Actual stars we have found that were once part of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy are shown in blue. network to allow people to donate their idle computer time to our project. This endeavor, dubbed Milkyway@ home, is powered by the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) the same software that powers other volunteer computing programs such as SETI@home and Einstein@home. So far, the idle time on 16,000 computers all over the world are available for us to utilize, and there is an active user group that soaks up news on our data analysis progress. A paper containing our first major results, Maximum Likelihood Fitting of Tidal Streams with Application to the Sagittarius Dwarf Tidal Tails Cole et al., 2008, was recently accepted to the Astrophysical Journal. We have shown that the accuracy of our algorithm and the data it produces to characterize the tidal stream is far superior to previous efforts. Our work has resulted in a marked improvement in the accuracy of the position and width of the stream, and the measurement of new quantities such as stream direction at each point along the debris. There are approximately 30 sections of SDSS data that include Sagittarius tidal debris; so far we have analyzed two. The first section spanned five years of work. Once New York Space Grant 2

3 the algorithm was fully developed and the code parallelized, analysis of the second section took about three months. I expect to analyze the remaining sections over the next year, and graduate with my Ph.D. in spring With more results coming in almost daily, all involved are excited by the prospects of this project and greatly impressed by the results thus far. To learn more about Milkyway@home and how to sign up and follow our progress, please visit Graduate student and NASA/NY Space Grant Fellowship recipient Nathan Cole explains his project to onlookers. He has made seven conference presentations including this one at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in St. Louis, MO in June Nathan Cole Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY York College Students Attend the 2008 NSBP & NSHP Conference Space Grant supported travel for four York College physics undergraduates to attend the 2008 Joint Annual Conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists in Washington, D.C. It was a transformative experience, as the students met a number of eminent physicists and spent considerable time with astrophysicists from the City University of NY, Columbia, Yale, and Fisk/ Vanderbilt. Along with Amy Colon, a Hunter College student entering graduate school this fall in astrophysics, the York College students won the Physics Jeopardy contest! This was a superb achievement especially since all team members except Amy were sophomores. York College undergraduates (Odingo Mitchell, Thompson Ukpebor, Nicholas Hunt-Walker, and Victor Udinwe) attend the 2008 NSBP & NSHP Conference. My Experience at the Annual Conference for the National Society of Black Physicists By Nicholas Hunt-Walker One paragraph is simply not enough to encompass what we feel about our first National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) conference. It wasn t just one aspect but a combination of many that came together to create lasting memories that will influence us for years. Two facets stood prominent in our minds. The first is the feeling we experienced within our first day at the conference: that of being amongst people with similar, and in many cases superior, abilities and goals. In a sense, we felt as if we had finally encountered our own community in the sciences. Their passion for the many varieties of the physical sciences spurred us to re-evaluate, and in turn boost, our own drives to succeed in our academic careers. The second equally potent feeling was that of exposure to the cornucopia of research and to people within our own disciplines. The connections we created with active professionals and rising graduate students are likely to strongly influence whatever career paths we take upon graduation, lasting our lifetimes. Overall, the experience of congregating with a mass of people intensely involved in their study of the Universe is one that every student in the sciences will note as life-changing. Fall 2008

4 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s SUNY Stony Brook The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program at SUNY Stony Brook joined the New York Space Grant in NYSG funding has supported the following four LSAMP undergraduate students research: Melissa Torres worked under the supervision of Dr. Louis Pena at Brookhaven National Laboratory during summer Her project was titled Effects of Inhibitors to bfgf Signal Transduction Pathways and Radiation-Induced Apoptosis. This summer Melissa is continuing to work on her project with support from the National Science Foundation. Melissa graduated in May 2008 and is intending to pursue a combined MD/PhD degree. Sandy Hernandez transferred to Stony Brook from SUNY Buffalo in fall 2007 to pursue a degree in Biomedical Engineering. Sandy started working under the supervision of Dr. Emilia Encheva in spring 2008 and is continuing his project, Controlling Cardiac Arrhythmias Through Wave Emission Sites, this summer. This project includes collaboration with the Max Planck Institute and Cornell University. Yannick Rigg is senior majoring in Chemistry and is working with Dr. Daniel Knopf in Stony Brook s School of Atmospheric and Marine Sciences. He is researching the role of organic compounds on ice cloud formation in the upper atmosphere. Such clouds cover significant areas of Earth and thus have a substantial effect on the global radiative budget and possible climate changes. Michael Scheid is a junior majoring in Biomedical Engineering working with Dr. Stefan Judex. His project focuses on integrative benefits of potential countermeasures to optimize musculoskeletal system health and its ability to regenerate and heal. He is researching whether treatment with extremely low-magnitude mechanical vibrations during disuse and prior to bone fracture will retain mesenchymal stem cell population and facilitate fracture healing. He is also evaluating the quality of bone and its ability to regenerate. Sabrina Thompson graduated from SUNY Stony Brook in May 2007 with a BE degree in Mechanical Engineering. She is currently enrolled as a prospective PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She works as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, researching propulsion system design. Sabrina was selected as a member of the NASA Academy program at Glenn Research Center for summer 2008, and is being supported by NY Space Grant funds. Her summer research includes the implementation and evaluation of control algorithms for variable rotor speed control to enhance rotorcraft performance. New York Space Grant

5 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s Medgar Evers College The MECSAT balloon science program at Medgar Evers College is providing leadership in ozonesonde profile investigations and BalloonSATs for a consortium of minority institutions. In November 2007 MECSAT hosted a workshop at its base in Paradox, NY for faculty and students from University of Houston-Downtown, South Carolina State University, Norfolk State University, and DePaul University. As part of a consortium on a NSF Geoscience Diversity award, MECSAT gathers ozone profiles in conjunction with the NASA Aura education/ public outreach program. MECSAT students continue to investigate tropospheric ozone with regular sounding launches in upstate NY. K-12 outreach activities include student presentations to middle and high school students, a demonstration launch with an ozonesonde, Students monitoring ozone profiles in VT. and hardware for high school Upward Bound students at Johnson State College in Vermont. MECSAT is also expanding to include ozone sounding launches downwind of New York City. Students will be anchoring NYC launches in coordination with Aura satellite overpasses and simultaneous profiles in Paradox, NY and Narragansett, Rhode Island. A new partner for the NYC profiles is the National Weather Service; launches will occur at the NWS/OKX sounding site in Brookhaven, NY. Polytechnic University During the program year, Prof. Kapila and his students conducted several research and outreach activities with NY Space Grant funding. Their research focuses on advanced control technology for aerospace systems and mechatronics-related experimentation. This article highlights an approach to achieve pulse synchronization of master-slave chaotic oscillator pairs plus one of their pre-college outreach programs. Master Slave Example of propeller demoboards and radio frequency transceivers to experimentally validate pulsed synchronization of chaotic oscillators. Synchronization of chaotic oscillators has incurred significant interest recently. The phenomenon of synchronization has been observed in many natural and biological systems and synchronization techniques are used in many engineering applications, including secure communications and multi-vehicle robotics. Most experimental and theoretical research on the master-slave synchronization focuses on continuous-time systems. Nevertheless, in many engineering applications noise corruption in analog signal transmission can lead to severe drawbacks in synchronization schemes. Thus, in recent years, synchronization of sampled-data systems has started to attract attention. Synchronization of sampleddata systems can also be useful in designing robust and effective cooperative control algorithms for robotic teams. In this effort, we considered the problem of master-slave synchronization of chaotic oscillators that are only sporadically coupled. We established sufficient conditions for global synchronization of a sampled-data master-slave chaotic system. The results of this research appeared in the Proceedings of the American Control Conference In spring 2008 Professor Kapila and his students conducted the four-day Applied Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) twice. Each session was attended by 10 to 15 teachers from New York City public elementary, middle, and high schools. Valentin Siderskiy, an Honors College student whose Honors thesis research is supported in part by New York Space Grant, conducted hands-on robotics sessions for teachers. See for additional details. Fall 2008

6 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s SUNY Geneseo This summer two SUNY Geneseo undergraduates helped initiate a new Space Grant project under the direction of Prof. George Marcus. John Lewis and Devin Brennan researched ways to improve optical characterization techniques to study atmospheric aerosols. Particles in the atmosphere, from water droplets to aerosols to dust and soot, play an important role in the complex global climate system. There are many ways to measure and quantify atmospheric particulates; this project incorporates optical characterization methods utilized heavily in space science. An optical sensor was built based on relatively new cavity enhanced spectroscopy techniques. This sensor uses a passive optical cavity to enhance the small light-scattering signal from aerosols. Eventually this sensor package can become a payload for the autonomously guided parafoil, an earlier Geneseo Space Grant project. John worked on optimizing the properties of the illumination source, a laser diode, for use with the John Lewis aligns a filter to clean up the shape of the laser diode beam, leaving it with a smooth spatial profile. sensor s optical cavity. Devin worked on improving the spectral characteristics of the laser diode and built an aerosol generation system to test the sensor concept in the lab prior to developing a sensor package for deployment. Devin Brennan operates a Physical Vapor Deposition chamber he built to deposit anti-reflection coatings on the laser diode source. Update on Cornell Student-Built Nanosatellite The Cornell CUSat student team won the University Nanosatellite-4 Program contest, earning a free launch of their spacecraft to demonstrate crucial in-orbit inspection and relative navigation capabilities (see article in Fall 2007 NYSG newsletter for more details). Faculty advisor Prof. Mason Peck provided this update: CUSat was set to launch in December 2009, but the mission appealed enough to the new Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office that they made it part of their Jumpstart Program. That program planned to launch a spacecraft on the SpaceX Falcon 1 s third try, originally scheduled for late June, now slipped into August. The student team made CUSat ready to go 18 months ahead of schedule. A ground station was built on Kwajalein atoll in preparation for flight operations. However, ORS decided to launch a different spacecraft: Trailblazer. So the team has been able to wrap up hardware work and environmental testing thanks to ORS s sponsorship and is focusing on extending the flight software so that CUSat s relative navigation capabilities are more interesting. The student-built spacecraft are in good shape for the original December 2009 launch opportunity or for something else that comes along earlier. For more information, refer to the project s web site: The student-built CUSat spacecraft are ready for launch 18 months early. New York Space Grant

7 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s SUNY Buffalo Space Grant funds support SUNY Buffalo undergraduate and graduate research fellowships, a graduate research assistant, and a Buffalo Engineering Awareness for Minorities (BEAM) five-week summer program for post-eleventh grade students. BEAM participants attended classes Mondays through Thursdays and then took field trips on Fridays to industry and educational institutions. One such field trip was to the General Motors Powertrain plant, hosted by the Plant Manager and Shop Chairman. Students were taught basic engineering principles and concept drawings, completed an exercise involving Global Manufacturing Systems, and demonstrated their skills by building cars and bridges using a team concept. Many volunteers from industry and education spoke to BEAM students, including: Personnel from Moog, Inc. conducted resume writing and interview skills seminars. A mechanical engineer from The Center for Industrial Effectiveness at SUNY Buffalo gave a lesson in quality control. SUNY Buffalo physics and astronomy professors conducted lessons in lasers and astronomy. A former BEAM student gave a presentation on his work as a civil engineer with the Buffalo Sewer Authority. A former BEAM student spoke about his work as an aerospace engineer with Northrop Grumman. Seven students participated in the summer 2007 BEAM/SEAS (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) Honors Research Program. Mentored individually by volunteer SUNY Buffalo engineering faculty, these high school students constructed a line-tracing robot, explored nonlinear finite element analysis using ABAQUS software, experimented with biocompatible silicon quantum dots for biological applications, worked on electromagnetism laboratory experiments, and examined fluid dynamic effects on soap films. BEAM students and parents attend closing presentations. BEAM students visit the Astronomy & Physics Department at SUNY Buffalo. Celebrate NASA s 50th Anniversary! During a field trip to the Erie Canal, BEAM students navigate through the canal observing historical attractions and engineering achievements. The NY Space Grant Consortium is honored to be a part of NASA. We salute all the men and women who contribute to its success, inspiring our future scientists, engineers, and explorers. To learn more about NASA s 50th anniversary: Fall 2008

8 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s Sciencenter The Sciencenter and New York Space Grant funded a two-part program to engage elementary-age children in the space sciences. This programming aligns with the Sciencenter s educational vision to touch the minds of each and every young person in our local community, expanding our reach and depth over time. Focusing on schools in underserved communities provides a critical means to reach students who might not have the opportunity to engage in Sciencenter programming otherwise and introduce them to space sciences. Cosmic Contest In Fall 2007 all elementary schools within three neighboring counties were invited to participate in a science writing and art contest focused on space sciences. Students in grades K-2 participated in a creative art and writing activity. Students in grades 3-5 researched and wrote one-page essays on their choice of topics related to space science. Entries were due in February The Sciencenter received 1,084 entries this year! Contest participants and their teachers received free passes to the Sciencenter museum. Sciencenter staff and volunteers selected a group of individual and class winners from each grade level. Winning entries are posted on the Sciencenter website Winners also received an award certificate and were honored at a special ceremony at the Sciencenter that showcased all of the submissions. Winning entries in the Sciencenter s Cosmic Contest, including a first grader s drawing of a Mars rover. Participating teachers greatly appreciate this program. Last year, two students from an economically disadvantaged school won the contest. Their teacher said, Thank you for providing this program. It s a wonderful project integrating science and writing. Winning this contest will be a great encouragement to these kids. Starlab Portable Planetarium The Sciencenter identified three schools with predominantly underserved children to receive the Starlab Portable Planetarium educational program in January and February Through this program, over 1,100 children experienced a tour of the night sky that integrated astronomy content with earth science, history, and mythology. This program reinforces learning from the writing contest. This program is also greatly appreciated by teachers, as one wrote, Thank you so much for the wonderful Starlab presentations to the entire range of grade levels here at South Seneca. Every single teacher from kindergarten through fifth grade had many glowing compliments for you! I sent out a survey asking about scheduling and content for next year and the results were unanimous: teachers would love to have you back at any time. With NY Space Grant funding, Sciencenter s Starlab Portable Planetarium visits schools. New York Space Grant 8

9 N e w Yo r k Spac e Gra n t H i g h l i g h t s Barnard College Barnard College utilizes Space Grant funds to support Physics and Astronomy undergraduate summer research. Lauren McCarthy started researching the atmospheric properties of brown dwarfs in summer 2006 under the guidance of Dr. Kelle Cruz, a postdoctoral research fellow at the American Museum of Natural History. She presented her research at the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 2007, and continued collaborating with Dr. Cruz (now a Spitzer Fellow at the California Institute of Technology) during summer Mollie Van Gordon also worked with Dr. Cruz on the Spitzer infrared spectrograph mid-infrared analysis of L dwarfs during summer Barnard is supporting two students in summer 2008: sophomore Glenna Clifton is working with Prof. Janna Levin on theories of the early universe, chaos, and black holes while freshman Erin Kara is working on high energy gamma-ray astrophysics with Prof. Reshmi Mukherjee. Lauren McCarthy with her poster at the 209th American Astronomical Meeting in Seattle, WA (January 2007). I am dropping a quick note to update you on the Goddard NASA Academy. Things have been great here. My personal project this summer is working with Dave Folta on an actual mission that will begin next October called Artemis. I am working with NASA-developed software to design and analyze transfer orbits for two satellites after ending their current mission, THEMIS. They will be transferred to the Moon via very intricate fly-by maneuvers to conserve what little fuel they have left. The satellites will then be parked in the L1 and L2 Lagrange points. The data this mission collects on orbit keeping will be vitally important for future missions capability to transfer data from the Moon to Earth. In addition, Artemis will provide scientific data on the Moon s plasma tail among other things. I m very excited to be working on an actual mission that is going to fly and I ve learned a lot about orbital mechanics. Another aspect of NASA Academy is the group project. Fortunately the group unanimously selected my proposal for the group project after only two evenings of discussion (this is very rare). We will investigate the requirements and changes needed to develop commercial space capabilities, specifically a commercial space sector that is not solely reliant on government funding. We hope the long-term effect is that NASA can get more for its money and focus on exploration and research instead of operations and technology development. We re working with people from the X-PRIZE Foundation, National Space Society, NASA Headquarters, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Ames Research Center, and others. As a group we have spent the last two days meeting with policy makers in Washington as well as NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. The group is very enthusiastic; we also have the opportunity to contribute to actual NASA policy that is currently under development - something that I personally look forward to very much. A big part of our project is to foster discussion and further work by aiding in the development of a website ( containing sources and topics for debate. Thank you again for your support this summer - I can assure you that I am making use of every possible second (including many that should be reserved for sleep). Bradley Cheetham poses next to a scale model of the Orion Bradley Cheetham, SUNY Buffalo crew capsule during a Lockheed Martin tour in Houston, TX. Fall 2008

10 MOST Exhibits Director Rocks On with NASA When the broadcast countdown starts four hours prior to launch, you realize you re not in New York any more! The launch requires clearance at sea to 50 kilometers, all vertical airspace, and a go/no go decision on 10 parameters. The launch vehicle is the NASA Orion Sounding Rocket a single stage, unguided rocket similar to a hobby rocket, only with 15,000 pounds of thrust! It s a bullet! 0 to 2,300 mph in 25 seconds! The Orion motor propels the rocket to Mach 3.5 prior to burnout. After 100 seconds, the motor separates from the payload. The payload reaches apogee shortly later at 124 seconds 65 kilometers up, mid mesosphere the zone where meteors start to burn when entering Earth s atmosphere. The payload section falls back to Earth on a parabolic path slowing to 200 miles per hour, then the parachute deploys 6 minutes into flight with impact in the Atlantic Ocean at approximately 16 minutes. The NASA RockOn! Workshop Dr. Peter Plumley was one of 60 participants attending RockOn!, a state-of-the-art workshop held at NASA s Wallops Flight Facility June on Wallops Island, Virginia. The workshop was sponsored and run by NASA, the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC), and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. Attendees represented 24 universities and various space flight organizations from 22 states and Puerto Rico. Teams at this six-day workshop learned the basics of building experiments for flight on suborbital rockets, built experiments from kits developed by COSGC, and learned about the steps and procedures for creating payloads for flight. The week culminated with the launch of our payload experiments in the early morning hours of Friday, June 27th on a NASA Orion Sounding Rocket. Experiment packages connected as a cluster, ready to go into the payload compartment. Workshop participants were divided into teams of three and built identical packages provided by COSGC. Each consisted of a science package (Geiger counter) and a sensor package (temperature sensor, accelerometers, and pressure sensor). Two additional experiments flew in the payload section: a camera deck and an air collection and containment core designed to measure carbon dioxide and methane in the stratosphere. Dr. Plumley s participation was funded by the NY Space Grant. Payload experiments, concepts, and lessons learned at this workshop will be applied to future flights of the high-power X Treme X Plorers rocket, a tech-based student rocket competition funded by Lockheed Martin Corporation and coordinated by staff at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology (MOST) and Syracuse University s College of Engineering and Computer Science. During summer 2008, twelve high school students from central NY will gain experience designing and flying payloads for X Treme X Plorers, using a 14-foot Nike Smoke sounding rocket representative of an early NASA launch vehicle. Photo credit: Tim Young Orion sounding rocket lifts off from Wallops Flight Facility on June 27, Peter Plumley Museum of Science & Technology (MOST) Exhibits Director Syracuse, NY Payload section recovered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Coast Guard. New York Space Grant 10

11 NY Space Grant Student Internships: Summer 2008 NYSG awarded stipends and travel funds to thirteen NY students this summer, including Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) and NASA Academy Program interns. Details are provided in the table below. NYSG also provided travel funds to three other NY students participating in NASA summer programs (not reflected in table). Space Grant funds also supported student research at NYSG institutions this summer. Location Students Students Home Institutions NASA Glenn Research Center (Cleveland, OH) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD) NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) 4 Cornell University, *Georgia Institute of Technology, and SUNY Buffalo 2 Queens College CUNY and SUNY Buffalo NASA Kennedy Space Center, FL 1 Cornell University NASA Langley Research Center (Hampton, VA) NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL) NY Space Grant institutions 63 * Student is a NY State resident. 4 Barnard College, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1 Cornell University 1 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Alfred University, Barnard College, City College of NY CUNY, Clarkson University, Colgate University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Medgar Evers College CUNY, Polytechnic University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Sciencenter, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY Stony Brook, Syracuse University, Union College, University of Rochester, and York College CUNY. Map of NY Space Grant Institutions NY county map from geology.com 11 Fall 2008

12 Participants in a Nov balloon science workshop, hosted by Medgar Evers College at the MECSAT base in the Adirondacks. Space Grant summer interns at Cornell. New York Space Grant Affiliate Directors Prof. Yervant Terzian, Cornell University (Director) Prof. Wayne Anderson, SUNY Buffalo Prof. Shermane Austin, Medgar Evers College, CUNY Prof. Thomas Balonek, Colgate University Mr. Steven Betza, Lockheed Martin Prof. Edward Brown, Manhattan College Prof. David Ferguson, SUNY Stony Brook Prof. Susannah Fritton, City College of New York, CUNY Prof. David Helfand, Columbia University Prof. Hiroshi Higuchi, Syracuse University Prof. Vikram Kapila, Polytechnic University Prof. Rebecca Koopmann, Union College Prof. Reshmi Mukherjee, Barnard College Prof. Heidi Newberg, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Prof. Chris O Dea, Rochester Institute of Technology Prof. Tim Paglione, York College, CUNY Prof. Judith Pipher, University of Rochester Prof. Aaron Steinhauer, SUNY Geneseo Prof. David Toot, Alfred University Prof. Charles Trautmann, Sciencenter Prof. Daniel Valentine, Clarkson University New York Space Grant Consortium 517 Space Sciences Building Cornell University Ithaca, NY New York Space Grant News Newsletter of the New York Space Grant Consortium Editors: Erica Miles Patricia Fernández de Castro Center for Radiophysics and Space Research Dept. of Astronomy and Space Sciences Cornell University