Posts tagged space
August 5 is Deadline to Register for August 9 Boulder County Farm Tour
Jul 28th
Boulder County, Colo. – The Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department and Colorado State University Extension are hosting this summer’s second tour to farms in Boulder County to inform the public and advisory committees about the issues relevant to the county’s Cropland Policy. Registration is required by Friday, August 5, to allow staff to arrange for adequate transportation.
What: Boulder County Cropland Policy Farm Tour
When: Tuesday, August 9, 5:15 p.m.
Registration Deadline: August 5, $5 per person, at http://agtours.eventbrite.com/
Where: Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Road, Longmont
The tour will depart from the Boulder County Fairgrounds north parking lot at 9595 Nelson Road in Longmont. Participants must arrive by 5:15 p.m. to check in. Buses will leave promptly at 5:30.
The Cropland Policy will outline the guiding principles that county staff will use to make management decisions on open space properties managed as cropland. Defining these principles will streamline decision-making processes during planning and clarify the goals of the cropland program for tenants and residents.
Tour participants will learn about agricultural production systems and the issues, challenges and opportunities particular to Boulder County open space lands. The tours highlight different farms, representing field and forage crops, vegetable crops and livestock.
Guests will travel in air-conditioned buses equipped with restrooms and an audio system. Drinks and snacks will be provided. Participants should bring a water bottle, wear sturdy shoes and dress appropriately for the weather. The tours are not recommended for children under 12. Participating farmers will be available to answer questions.
For more information, please contact Agricultural Resource Specialist Meaghan Huffman at 303-678-6181 or agriculture@bouldercounty.org.
NASA MISSION TO MARS LED BY CU-BOULDER COMPLETES MAJOR MILESTONE
Jul 22nd
July 22, 2011
A $670 million NASA orbiting mission to probe the past climate of Mars led by the University of Colorado Boulder reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review by the space agency.
Known as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, the mission underwent Critical Design Review at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., July 11-15. The independent review board was comprised of members from NASA and several external organizations who met to validate the system design.
Critical Design Reviews, or CDRs, are one-time programmatic events that bridge the design and manufacturing stages of a project. A successful review means the design is validated and will meet its requirements, is backed up with solid analysis and documentation and has been proven to be safe, according to NASA officials. MAVEN’s successful review grants permission to the mission team to begin manufacturing hardware.
“The Critical Design Review is a real benchmark for the MAVEN team as we progress toward launch,” said CU-Boulder Professor Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for the mission. “We are on schedule and on track, which is good news and a tribute to the hard work by all of the MAVEN team members.” Jakosky also is associate director of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“This team continues to nail every major milestone like clockwork, as laid out three years ago when the mission was proposed,” said Dave Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “CDR success is very important because it validates that the team is ready for fabrication, assembly and test of all mission elements. It also enables us to stay on plan for launch in November 2013.”
MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time. MAVEN will determine how much of the Martian atmosphere has been lost over time by measuring the current rate of escape to space and by gathering enough information about the relevant processes to allow extrapolation backward in time.
“Understanding how and why the atmosphere changed through time is an important scientific objective for Mars,” said Jakosky. “MAVEN will make the right measurements to allow us to answer this question. We’re in the middle of the hard work right now — building the instruments and spacecraft — and we’re incredibly excited about the science results we’re going to get from the mission,” he said.
The spacecraft will carry three instrument suites. The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California, Berkeley with support from CU-Boulder and NASA Goddard, contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet.
The Remote Sensing Package built by CU-Boulder will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer provided by NASA Goddard will measure the composition and isotopes of neutral ions.
CU-Boulder will provide science operations, build instruments and lead education and public outreach efforts. NASA Goddard will manage the project. Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colo., will build the spacecraft.
The Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley also will build instruments for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will provide navigation support, the Deep Space Network, and the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.
“This is good news for the University of Colorado Boulder that the MAVEN mission has reached this milestone,” said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “Our Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has partnered with NASA on successful missions to Mars dating back more than 40 years, and we are confident the MAVEN mission will return some of the most exciting data yet.”
The MAVEN science team includes three LASP scientists from CU-Boulder heading instrument teams — Nick Schneider, Frank Eparvier and Robert Ergun — as well as a large supporting team of scientists, engineers and mission operations specialists.
MAVEN will include participation by a number of CU-Boulder graduate and undergraduate students in the coming years. Currently there are more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students working on research projects at LASP, which provides hands-on training for future careers as engineers and scientists, said Jakosky.
For more information about MAVEN go to http://www.nasa.gov/maven.
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Longmont-to-Boulder Regional Trail opening July 14
Jul 7th
Boulder County, Colo. – The Boulder County Transportation and Parks and Open Space departments, along with the City of Longmont, will open the north segment of the Longmont-to-Boulder Regional Trail on Thursday, July 14.
The trail segment is nearly three miles long and stretches from the Lefthand Valley Grange Trailhead on North 83rd Street to the North 95th Street bridge at Lefthand Creek in Longmont. Trail segment map.
“We are very excited about the completion of this section of the LoBo trail because it provides a long-awaited off-street alternative between Gunbarrel, Niwot and Longmont,” said Kristine Obendorf, Boulder County’s Regional Trails Planner.
A public ribbon-cutting ceremony with officials from Boulder County and Longmont will take place on July 14 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lefthand Valley Grange Trailhead near the corner of 83rd Street and Niwot Road.
Group bike rides from Longmont and Boulder that will meet at the Lefthand Valley Grange Trailhead for the ribbon-cutting ceremony are being organized. Information about the ride from Longmont is posted online. Contact Sue Prant at bikesue@gmail.com for information about the ride from Boulder.
The new trail crosses Lefthand Creek just north of Oxford Road using a refurbished pedestrian bridge from the City of Boulder that was part of a three-way bridge swap among Boulder County and the cities of Longmont and Boulder.
“We are happy about the partnership with Boulder County as we were able to replace a functionally obsolete bridge and replace it with a new structure that meets all current standards and allows for a trail underpass,” City of Longmont Project Manager Tom Street said.
The joint project between Boulder County and the City of Longmont includes both the bridge and trail connection and was funded by Longmont, a federal transportation grant awarded to Boulder County in 2007, and the countywide transportation sales tax approved by voters in 2001.
The majority of the land provided for the trail is either within county road right-of-way or is on county open space property purchased with Parks and Open Space sales tax funds.
The project comprises the northern most section of the planned 12-mile Longmont-to-Boulder Regional Trail that begins on the City of Boulder’s Cottonwood Trail and terminates at the Lefthand Greenway in Longmont. The LoBo Trail is primarily a soft-surface path that provides a continuous off-road link along the Diagonal Highway corridor.
Missing links at Jay Road and Lookout Road are in the planning phases as is a new connection to the Boulder Reservoir underneath the Diagonal Highway. Please visit the Boulder County Regional Trails Program webpage for more information.
