News

Is Space Burnt Orange? 10 Reasons Why it Is

March 27, 2024

Alumna Stephanie Wilson, an astronaut who has participated in three missions, shares with fellow Longhorns her keys to success and how they were put to the test during a harrowing effort to keep the International Space Station from losing power. Photo credit NASA.

As we prepare for the total solar eclipse, we can’t help but have a school-kid crush on the cosmos. It’s the perfect time to explore UT’s connections to NASA, space exploration and discovery.

  1. UT aerospace engineering alumni and students helped complete the first U.S. Moon landing in 50 years. “Houston, Odysseus has found its new home.”

  2. Longhorn Alan Stern led NASA’s New Horizons mission to help us understand Pluto and worlds at the edge of our solar system.

  3. There are more than 500,000 objects floating in space and only about 2,000 of them are operational. UT professor Moriba Jah, a former spacecraft navigator for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is on a mission to curtail the cosmic junkyard.

  4. UT law student Brittany Silvester’s interests lie at the intersection of space travel and the law, specifically laws that will govern future human presence on the Moon and Mars. She has held several NASA internships and recently won an award from the Strauss Center.

  5. Stephanie Wilson, an astronaut who has participated in three missions, shares with fellow Longhorns her keys to success and how they were put to the test during a harrowing effort to keep the International Space Station from losing power.

  6. Small satellites, referred to by some as space lighthouses, will someday help navigate spacecraft to the Moon. UT researchers will receive close to $2 million from NASA to jumpstart construction.

  7. Astronaut and alumnus Greg Holt discusses his role in leading the navigation system for Orion’s flight to the Moon.

  8. UT team finds habitable zone planet hidden in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this one is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature.

  9. In 2008 Longhorn Karen Nyberg became the 50th woman to travel into space. Take a look back at her experience at the International Space Station.

  10. As an undergraduate, Ann Dattilo, B.S. ’19, led a team that discovered two new planets with the help of artificial intelligence.

     

     

Read the original version of this UTNews story.