Perseverance drives innovation. NASA video from 135 million miles away may help us understand if life once existed on the now-desolate surface of Mars. Following a nine-month journey, Perseveranceâs landing on the red planet shows what happens when science and imagination collide. The passion that drives NASA scientists also drives Vandals â and sometimes those are the same people. Vandal Avery Brock â19, from Redmond, Washington, now coordinates for NASA the senior capstone projects he participated in just three years ago. His relationship with NASA began as a sophomore when he helped design a fix for an orbiting satellite during an internship with NASAâs Ames Research Center. The fix ensured the successful launch of the next satellite a year later. He is quick to credit the undergraduate research experience at the University of Idaho for his decision to be a Vandal and his interstellar job. âAt large institutions, youâre standing in line behind 40,000 students just to have a shot at a meaningful experience. Thatâs what makes U of I stand out,â said Avery. âYou can get in the labs, befriend faculty and work on outstanding projects on a daily basis. Being smaller means more resources and more opportunity to spread those around.â That opportunity took junior Lauren Perla, a mechanical engineering major from Sammamish, Washington, to Chile this spring. She and three classmates launched air balloons that record gravity waves produced by a complete solar eclipse. The Idaho Space Grant Consortium studentsâ work will help atmospheric scientists better understand gravity waves to improve current weather prediction models. Students have aimed for the stars for 30 years through the Idaho Space Grant Consortium, headquartered at the U of I, by working with NASA to create out-of-this-world experiences that fuel the space agencyâs workforce and propel their research. Some of that research will take flight to the International Space Station later this year. Hannah Johnson, a senior from Coeur dâAlene, and five classmates will send their experiment about microgravityâs impact on bacteria-resistant polymers to the station for 30 days â without any interaction or observation from the station crew â before it returns to Earth for further research. It is one of five student projects â other project teams include Stanford and Columbia â selected by NASA through the Student Payload Opportunity With Citizen Science program. Each summer, dozens of Vandals ignite NASAâs summer internships, which often launch into careers with the space agency. One thing is clear â not even the sky is the limit for Vandals. |