Fall 2023
To the moon
If you understand hydrogen, you have a future. » More ...
NASA
Winter 2022
Making Space for Women: Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson Space Center
Edited by Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal ’04 PhD History
Texas A&M University Press: 2022
One made the coffee every morning. “That was just standard operating procedure,” she explains, noting one boss never called her by her name. It was always “Young Lady.”
Another, in her first job out of high school, babysat for astronauts after work. Still another, a mathematician, was asked to fill in for two weeks for a secretary who was on her honeymoon. When she … » More …
Summer 2017
Space farming
Surviving the challenges of deep space exploration could rely as much on botany as astrophysics.
NASA sees plants not only as potential food sources aboard future spacecraft but as natural oxygen producers. The space agency is preparing for its first in-depth study of how growth and development of plants is affected by gravity, or more specifically the lack of it.
“The overall significance is what it could mean for space exploration,” says Norman G. Lewis, a Regents professor at Washington State University’s Institute of Biological Chemistry and principal investigator for the NASA-funded study. “Whether it’s colonizing planets, establishing a station, … » More …
Summer 2017
Space Cougs
Since the 1960s, engineers, biologists, and even historians who graduated from Washington State have contributed to the exploration of our solar system. You can read about a few of them below. If you know of other Cougs who have been involved in space exploration, please send their stories and we’ll include them here.
Thora Waters Halstead ’50
Space biologist
Microbiologist Thora Waters Halstead pioneered the field of space biology and her research now is a critical piece of NASA’s plans to send astronauts to Mars.
Waters, who earned her undergraduate degree at Washington State University in 1950, was a trailblazer at NASA … » More …
Summer 2016
Colonizing the stars
Traveling to the stars is one thing. Living there is another.
Washington State University is tackling challenges that could enable future astronauts to survive indefinitely on Mars and other extraterrestrial locations.
At the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, for example, a team of students designed a domed habitat that could be built robotically from Martian or Lunar soil with a special 3D printer. Dubbed the WazzuDOME, it was selected by NASA as a finalist in a design competition last year and earned the team a trip to the world’s largest science fair, the annual Maker Faire, in New York City.
“We took … » More …
Fall 2014
Mission accomplished
It was 2 a.m. on February 24, 2009, and six years of George Mount’s work had just launched toward space.
Mount, then a physicist in the WSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, had been part of a team led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), a sophisticated instrument to measure carbon dioxide from space.
It looked like a picture-perfect launch. The researchers had boarded buses from the launch site and were riding back to their hotel when they learned the news: The rocket carrying their satellite had failed to reach orbit. Instead, the … » More …
Spring 2009
Space Chronicles
Working on her doctorate at Washington State University, Jennifer Ross-Nazzal ’04 was drawn to public history–a field that combines academic history with non-traditional methods of collecting and presenting historical information. The program has been in effect at WSU since 1979 and has produced historians who now work for public archives, historical sites, and museums around the country.
Ross-Nazzal’s studies at WSU led to a focus on women’s history and an internship at a museum. “Though that was a good experience, I wanted to do another internship,” she says. Craving a very different experience, she found an offer at Johnson Space Center of the National Aeronautics … » More …