Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa, professor and Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, spoke about the Mars Sample Return program at Whitaker Hall on Oct. 26. As the lead scientist for the program, Wadhwa gave insight into the motivations behind the program and the prospective timeline of retrieving samples from Mars.

In honor of this monumental step in space exploration, the members of Forum staff share the additional planets that they, too, would like to visit.

In light of our very own Washington University alum, Bob Behnken, being launched up into space to live and work on the International Space Station (ISS), I was motivated to find out what it takes to follow in his footsteps.
In order to fulfill my search for answers on what it takes to become an astronaut, I decided to ask one.

Physicist, speaker, and NASA scientist K. Renee Horton, Ph.D., discussed the importance of inclusion, her work at NASA and her nontraditional educational path to a crowd of Washington University community members in Busch Hall Friday afternoon.

Astrophysicist Edward Stone spoke about the history of the Voyager project and the recent breakthrough of the Voyager 1 spacecraft into interstellar space.

Washington University professor and co-investigator on the science team in NASA’s New Horizons mission Bill McKinnon is excited to see what comes next for the project, which in July captured the best-quality images of Pluto to date.

The worst part of the government shutdown was something that very few people even knew was happening. While Congress bickered and CNN displayed a flashy countdown, thousands of people were sent home from their government jobs. A number of these people belonged to NASA, and while they sat at home, twiddling their thumbs, the Curiosity rover sat on the surface of Mars.

The Washington University professor who spent several years as deputy principal coordinator for the Mars rover Opportunity was recently selected to contribute to a new rover mission.

Senior Kaitlin Burlingame, a mechanical engineering student who has done extensive research while at Washington University, received a $10,000 award from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation Thursday afternoon. Retired NASA astronaut Walt Cunningham presented it to her in a ceremony on campus.

Mars exploration is a specialty at Washington University. If President Obama’s proposal for NASA to aim for a human landing on Mars by 2030 is enacted, University scientists would be part of this grand endeavor. Ray Arvidson, the James S.