March 27, 2013

Young space commanders

Many students dream of becoming astronauts, operating spacecraft, conducting research, discovering new frontiers. But students at the University of Colorado Boulder have a chance to live that dream while they’re still in school. As part of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics’ mission control center, students help professionals guide four NASA spacecraft.

The most famous mission LASP controls is Keppler, a NASA mission that looks for planets going around other stars. To date, Keppler has found 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars, many of those Earth-size planets. Twenty professionals and 20 students support operations at mission control.

Working at the…

Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood is editor and publisher of BizWest, a regional business journal covering Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties. Wood co-founded the Northern Colorado Business Report in 1995 and served as publisher of the Boulder County Business Report until the two publications were merged to form BizWest in 2014. From 1990 to 1995, Wood served as reporter and managing editor of the Denver Business Journal. He is a Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
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