News and Events
UCF GOLD Project Makes Critical Step on Path to Space
ORLANDO, April 07, 2015 – A contract award to SES Government Solutions puts UCF’s Global-Scale Observations of Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission on track to launch no earlier than Fall, 2017. The award, made by the University of Colorado, a partner in the project, will give the GOLD payload the ride it needs to geostationary …
A UCF lab has developed a recipe for creating Martian soil on Earth. And yes, it’s red.
Click here to read the article on the Orlando Sentinel.
Sheyene Gerardi Infusing Scientific Progress into Robotics Outreach
UCF’s Florida Space Institute and NASA’s Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS) announced today an expanded collaboration with Sheyene Gerardi to advance space robotics through visionary, global participation in space. The partnership between the Florida Space Institute and Sheyene Gerardi is making rapid progress. Ms. Gerardi is joining NASA’s Center for Lunar and …
Laboratory Astrophysics Studies along the Cosmic Cycle of Gas
September 6th, 2018 – Seminar at FSI at 11am Partnership 1 Room 209 Abstract – Tracing the evolution of baryonic matter from atoms in space to stars and planets hinges on an accurate understanding of the underlying physics controlling the properties of the gas at every step along this pathway. Here I will focus on …
Arecibo Observatory proves that Einstein was right (again)
Data collected from the William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory helped researchers confirm the strong equivalence principle of general relativity for heavy objects. An essential concept in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the equivalence principle, proposed that all objects accelerate identically in an external gravitational field. Prior to the results by Archibald, et al. published in Nature , tests of the …
Arecibo Observatory observations of a massive and fast-spinning pulsing star
Imagine being able to see a flea on the surface of Pluto. That’s a good way to describe what the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico helped a group of Canadian researchers do. The team, led by Robert Main of the University of Toronto, was able to observe unprecedented details of a pulsar 6,500 light years from Earth. …
New Sensor to Detect, Prevent Fire-Causing Gases in Space Craft Developed at UCF
Subith Vasu, an affiliated faculty in UCF’s Florida Space Institute, and his team recently developed and tested LED-based fire sensors for space applications. Their paper is selected as the cover article for the March 2018 issue of New Space journal- an international peer reviewed journal dedicated to commercial space transportation. Other papers in this issue …
Planetary Radar Research at the Arecibo Observatory
FSI Seminar Thursday, May 3 at 11:00 AM at FSI Partnership 1 Room 209 Title: Planetary radar research at the Arecibo Observatory Speaker: Anne Virkki Abstract: Planetary radar is one of the humankind’s strongest ground-based instruments for post-discovery characterization and orbital refinement of near-Earth objects. The radar echo brightness and polarization are suggestive of …
FSI Researcher Receives Prestigious ASCE Award
Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist in UCF’s Florida Space Institute, has won the Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for 2016 from the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The award was presented to Dr. Metzger at a banquet on April 12, 2018, during Earth & Space 2018, the 16th Biennial ASCE International Conference on …
FSI Arecibo Press Conference
Click to view the FSI Arecibo Press Conference.