o CU-Boulder is the single largest university recipient of NASA research dollars in the nation, according to the space agency. In fiscal year 2008, CU-Boulder received roughly $56 million from NASA.
o CU-Boulder is the only university in the world to have designed, built and launched instruments to every planet in the solar system. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics currently has a $12 million instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft now at Saturn, an $8.7 million instrument en route to Mercury on the MESSENGER mission and a student-built dust counter on the New Horizons mission to Pluto launched in 2006.
o A $70 million instrument designed by CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, designed to better understand how galaxies, stars and planets evolved is slated to be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-October.
o A satellite carrying two LASP instruments to study high-altitude polar clouds thought to be related to methane and carbon dioxide emissions by humans was launched by NASA in 2007. The mission, the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, is being controlled from LASP's Space Technology Building in the CU Research Park.
o Students at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium headquartered at CU-Boulder, which provides undergraduates with hands-on experience, have designed, built and flown three sounding rocket payloads, three space shuttle payloads, a satellite and hundreds of balloon experiments in the past 16 years.
o A $100 million satellite designed, built and operated by LASP known as the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, was launched in 2003 by NASA to study how and why variations in the sun affect Earth's atmosphere and climate.
o BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-sponsored Research Partnership Center located in CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering sciences department, has flown payloads on 29 NASA space shuttle microgravity space missions, including experiments that have resided on the International Space Station and Russia's Mir Space Station. Bioserve was formed in 1989 to develop products through space and life science research in partnership with industry, academia and government using the microgravity of space.
o Since 1962, 17 CU-Boulder alumni have flown on 40 space missions, spanning the entire manned flight program. CU-Boulder ranks in the top five U.S. universities, excluding military academies, in the number of astronaut alums. An 18th CU astronaut alum graduated from UC-Colorado Springs.
o LASP has operated more spacecraft than all other university-based organizations combined, and employs about 125 undergraduate and graduate students in all areas of science, engineering and mission operations. LASP currently operates nine scientific instruments in space.