When a NASA spacecraft made its first full orbit around Jupiter, a University of Iowa instrument on board recorded haunting sounds befitting the Halloween season. The UI instrument was listening to Jupiter’s auroras, light shows similar to the northern and southern lights on Earth but on a vastly larger scale. The radio emissions cast by…
Shifting Sands on Mars
One day, most likely, humans will visit Mars and begin to unravel its geological history and even determine if anything once lived there. Until then, though, scientists have employed all sorts of techniques to study Mars from afar, including launching orbiting satellites and dispatching rovers to scurry over its surface. Despite these efforts, much remains…
Rockets to Launch in Search of Unseen Parts of Universe
Walk into the corner astronomy lab in the basement of Van Allen Hall at the University of Iowa, and you’ll likely hear a student spontaneously burst into song while creating preliminary computer aided designs for an upcoming NASA project proposal. Or, find a former-accountant-turned-astronomer designing circuit boards and routing cables through the colorfully exposed electronic…