Space

As NASA’s Perseverance rover headed for Mars, a Pitt faculty member and an alumna had much more than a passing interest.

Mechanical engineering student Aarti Patel found inspiration in outer space during an artistic internship at NASA this spring.

Sanford Asher has spent his career studying UV Raman spectroscopy, which uses ultraviolet light to excite molecules and determine the basic components of matter. Now, he’s using it to look for life on Mars.

The question for regenerative medicine research is “‘What can we do in space that we can't do on Earth that makes a difference?’" said William Wagner, director of the McGowan Institute, which has joined with the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory to look for answers. "That's a pretty exciting question, because it's currently unanswered."

As a postdoctoral researcher, Bruce Hapke helped NASA determine the consistency of the moon’s soil, which helped engineers create the proper boots, rovers and wheeled equipment for the Apollo 11 landing, which happened 50 years ago this Saturday. Hapke and others at Pitt have helped build on a legacy of space research.

Emily Klonicki spent the summer in a NASA lab helping to develop filters to keep microbes from contaminating Mars.

Pitt’s Shadow Bandits, a research team of students, faculty and staff, will livestream the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse and conduct research — from 100,000 feet — as part of a nationwide NASA project.

The Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing researches systems that can be broken apart and reassembled, like Legos, and also withstand an extraterrestrial environment.

Hapke, who correctly predicted the texture of the moon’s porous and sandy surface, was among the first scientists to receive materials for study from the Apollo 11 mission.

The senior in the Swanson School of Engineering is one of six scholars nationwide to receive the annual award.