The University of Iowa’s Physics and Astronomy Department has received a nearly $1.5 million grant from NASA to continue to advance scientific research and study of space equipment.
The federal funds will help connect and draw more students into the department, help facilitate the purchase of equipment to build research connected to future space missions and foster the “continued excellence” of the department, Associate Professor Casey DeRoo said. DeRoo is also the principal investigator of this grant award.
“This award actually gets us to the point that we can make substantial capital investments and (are) making sure that when NASA comes asking for particular instruments or particular science case, Iowa can answer in the form of building hardware,” DeRoo said in a press conference on Friday.
One of those projects focuses on the production of miniature “ring cores,” which are instruments attached to “miniature spacecraft” that will serve as “the future of space science,” UI said in a release .