A new exhibit titled "CU In Space" that chronicles the University of Colorado's contributions to the nation's space program will open July 8 at the CU Heritage Center.
CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø alumnus Scott Carpenter, a former Mercury astronaut, will attend a preview ceremony at the center at 5 p.m. July 7 for exhibit supporters and special guests.
The exhibit, which took more than a year to develop, takes visitors on an extensive tour from the earliest days of CU's space program beginning with sounding rocket launches in the late 1940s to the most recent NASA missions carrying sophisticated CU instruments to probe planets and stars.
Located in Old Main near Broadway and University, the exhibit is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and is free and open to the public.
A colorful, fact-packed timeline circling the exhibit highlights events from the CU space program. To date 15 CU alumni have flown in space and NASA's 1996-97 contracts to the CU space program totaled $36 million.
The exhibit includes a moon rock on loan from NASA, a space suit worn by the late CU alumnus and astronaut Stuart Roosa, and a model sculpture of late alumnus Jack Swigert that is now on display in the U.S. Capitol Building. It also includes items from NASA's ill-fated Challenger mission that exploded in 1973, killing CU alumnus Ellison Onizuka and six others.
CU has flown instruments and experiments on virtually every NASA planetary mission, including the Mariner missions to Mars in 1969 and 1971, the Voyager Tour of the Solar System in 1977 and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter in 1979. CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø also controlled and operated the first NASA satellite ever entirely operated by a university -- the Solar Mesosphere Explorer satellite from 1981 to 1988 -- and is now controlling a second satellite known as the Student Nitric Oxide Explorer that was designed and built at CU.
The university has two instruments on NASA's Galileo mission now at Jupiter and another speeding toward Saturn. One instrument now under construction in collaboration with Ball Aerospace, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, will be inserted on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.
"We are very excited about this exhibit," said Kay Oltmans, director of the CU Heritage Center. "I think the public will be surprised at the involvement and impact CU has had on the space program over the years."
The exhibit also contains a "Toolbox" area for CU instruments that have flown in space, including an incubator for biomedical and agricultural tests and a space shuttle Coca-Cola dispenser developed by the CU-headquartered BioServe Center for the Commercialization of Space.
The area also features other instruments CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø students and faculty have designed and built, including spectrometers that break light down by wavelength to provide information on the distances, temperatures, chemicals and densities of stars and planets.
Another section of the exhibit focuses on looking at Earth from space, said Nancy Miller, CU Heritage Center assistant director. There is information on the TOPEX-Poseidon mission studying ocean currents and sea rise involving several members of CU's aerospace engineering department.
The exhibit also includes CU archaeological projects conducted from space, including the use of remote sensing by archaeologists to locate and map ancient footpaths in Costa Rica and ancient Indian quarries in Montana.
Another exhibit features the gathering of space data by spacecraft, satellites, highflying kites, balloons and sounding rockets. CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø has flown over 100 sounding rocket missions in the past several decades, including three by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, a group of primarily undergraduates who design, build and control space instruments.
"We would really like to involve the Â鶹¹ÙÍø community in this exhibit," said Miller. "CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø has a dynamic story to tell, and we hope this exhibit will help people understand the role our university has played in the space program."