December 23 – December 31, 2018

Students Designing Augmented Reality System For Astronauts

December 22, 2018 – NASA is turning to university students for help with the next big space technology – augmented reality. The University of Colorado Boulder has been selected by NASA as one of 16 colleges to participate in the Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students (SUITS) 2019 challenge. Read More

Lockheed Martin Creating Up To 550 Jobs In Jefferson County

December 22, 2018 – Lockheed Martin Space is relocating portions of its production for the Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) program to its headquarters in unincorporated Jefferson County. The project will relocate portions of the program’s manufacturing capabilities as well as engineering positions across all disciplines. Lockheed Martin is actively pursuing local talent to staff a number of these key roles primarily in systems, electrical, and mechanical engineering, project management and business operations. Read More

IEEE And Lockheed Martin To Sign Corporate Partnership Agreement

December 22, 2018 – IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity, and Lockheed Martin, a global security and aerospace company, have signed an agreement to work together under the IEEE Corporate Partnership Program. Read More

Ultima Thule’s First Mystery

December 22, 2018 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is bearing down on Ultima Thule, its New Year’s flyby target in the far away Kuiper Belt. Among its approach observations over the past three months, the spacecraft has been taking hundreds of images to measure Ultima’s brightness and how it varies as the object rotates. Read More

Lucy Finds Its Place In The Solar System: Navigating NASA’s First Mission To The Trojan Asteroids

This diagram illustrates Lucy’s orbital path. The spacecraft’s path (green) is shown in a frame of reference where Jupiter remains stationary, giving the trajectory its pretzel-like shape. After launch in October 2021, Lucy has two close Earth flybys before encountering its Trojan targets. In the L4 cloud Lucy will fly by (3548) Eurybates (white), (15094) Polymele (pink), (11351) Leucus (red), and (21900) Orus (red) from 2027-2028. After diving past Earth again Lucy will visit the L5 cloud and encounter the (617) Patroclus-Menoetius binary (pink) in 2033. As a bonus, in 2025 on the way to the L4, Lucy flies by a small Main Belt asteroid, (52246) Donaldjohanson (white), named for the discoverer of the Lucy fossil. After flying by the Patroclus-Menoetius binary in 2033, Lucy will continue cycling between the two Trojan clouds every six years. Image Credit: Southwest Research Institute

December 22, 2018 – In science fiction, explorers can hop in futuristic spaceships and traverse half the galaxy in the blink of a plot hole. However, this sidelines the navigational acrobatics required in order to guarantee real-life mission success. In 2021, the feat of navigation that is the Lucy mission will launch. To steer Lucy towards its targets doesn’t simply involve programming a map into a spacecraft and giving it gas money – it will fly by six asteroid targets, each in different orbits, over the course of 12 years. Read More