Matt Lenda, an aerospace engineering student and LASP employee, works in the command center for NASA mission Kepler under the guidance of Bill Possel, Director of Mission Ooperations and data Systems for LASP. (Photo by Glenn J. Asakawa/University of Colorado)
Few students turn to look at the engraved, silver-plated sign standing above an office door tucked next to the Duane Physics building on the CU campus. It is not something that stands out, and yet, it marks one of the university’s most prestigious features.
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, according to the LASP Web site, is a research facility that hosts some of the nation’s top space research. Created in 1948 as the Upper Atmosphere Lab, the facility’s goal was to move research in space exploration forward and progress our understanding of different astronomical phenomenon.
The technologically advanced laboratory, with its main facility located on the East Campus, focuses on making discoveries through research and cooperation between the atmospheric, space physics, solar and planetary, engineering and mission operation divisions of the facility, according to the LASP Web site.
LASP is also known for its employees, many of whom are students at CU.
Matt Lenda, an aerospace engineering major pursuing a five-year master’s degree at CU and employee of LASP, said that his experiences in LASP for the last two and a half years as a Command Controller have been useful and demonstrative of the industry.
“The professionals treat us like other employees and don’t patronize us,” Lenda said. “If we screw up, we get chewed out and that’s the way it is.”
Lenda said his job entails sending commands to various spacecrafts that the research facility operates and observing different elements such as temperatures, voltages, reaction wheel speeds, orientation, positions and statuses of spacecrafts and finding solutions to any difficulties that arise. Lenda said the job has provided invaluable experience for him.
According to their Web site, LASP has been a nationally acclaimed research institution for years. In July, NASA awarded the center $42 million for the development of a new astronomical instrument, the Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, which will evaluate climate change and monitor radiation from the sun.
Funding for LASP’s programs come from NASA contracts, as well as independent contractors who want further research to be completed in the particular fields of interest. The laboratory focuses mainly on the solar system, and has sent four spacecrafts in orbit since its inception and is in the process of sending a fifth in the near future, according to the LASP Web site.
While LASP is more widely known among the astrophysics and astronomy students at the university, its program employs students from any background, as long as they have the necessary mathematic credentials, specific to the program.
Emilia Reed, an employee with the Office of Education and Public Outreach at LASP, says that the astronomic research facility is currently hosting 118 graduate and undergraduate student employees who perform a variety of activities from building hardware to commandeering the mission control center for spacecrafts currently in space.
“If you can do the math, you can fly the spacecrafts,” Reed said.
The jobs offered to students at LASP, while rewarding, also require a certain amount of dedication.
Lenda said that Command Controllers are full-time students who must maintain a certain GPA to remain employed at the facility.
“Balancing 20 hours of work per week during the school year can make things a little tight,” Lenda said.
Even though students said they did not necessarily know about all of the programs that LASP offers, its prestigious reputation makes it a point of curiosity for students in the science fields.
“I’m not really looking for something right now,” said Michael Auyeung, a junior computer science major. “But it’s very interesting.”
LASP is not the only facility in the nation that provides data to NASA and other researchers, but it does provide some of the most important data on the sun and solar system.
“We are the number one student operations team in the nation; many other universities can boast their mission operations programs too, but most of them fly constellations of identical, smaller satellites,” Lenda said. “At LASP, we operate five wildly different spacecraft.”
The facility’s use of student employees, Reed said, also adds to the prestigious reputation of the research center.
“No other institution provides the same facilities,” Reed said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sushupta Srinidhi at Sushupta.srinidhi@colorado.edu.
