With $1.5 million from the Department of Energy, UA researchers are continuing to improve groundbreaking technology to produce solar electricity at a price competitive with non-renewable energy sources.
Just behind the University of Arizona’s Bear Down Gymnasium, a house-sized frame of crisscrossing steel tubes is mounted onto a swiveling post in the concrete bottom of an empty swimming pool. (more…)
*A UA astronomy research team was awarded a $600,000 grant for technology development under NASA’s Explorer mission program. The mission would send a space telescope high above Earth’s surface to watch how planets around other stars form and evolve.*
There has been much talk about possible Earth-like planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope launched just two years ago in the search for life outside our solar system. So far, it has discovered more than 2,326 possible Earth-like planets, and the number keeps growing.
At the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, an astronomy research team is asking questions such as, “How do planets like those found by Kepler arise? What materials are present during their initial formation? How do they evolve?” (more…)
*A new space telescope designed to peer into the inner reaches of far-away solar systems and a balloon riding the jet stream 120,000 feet above ground are two UA research proposals selected by NASA for further evaluation as potential future science missions.*
A research balloon circling the Earth in the outer fringes of the atmosphere and a space telescope peering through the dust swirls of far-away solar systems in search of alien planets are among the winning proposals selected by NASA for further study as part of NASA’s Explorer Mission program.
Both project proposals, called EXCEDE and GUSSTO, are led by astronomers at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and are among 11 selected by NASA for evaluation as potential future science missions. (more…)
