On Wednesday, Nov. 13, the University of New Mexico’s first Space Day was held at the Student Union Building Ballroom. The event welcomed all space enthusiasts from on and off campus.
The Space Sustainability Research Grand Challenge and the Center for Advanced Sample Analysis of Astromaterials from the Moon and Beyond, aka CASA Moon, supported and organized the event. Both programs are centered at UNM.
Charles Shearer Jr. and Maryam Hojati are UNM professors and members of SSRGC. They were the lead organizers for Space Day.
“We are trying to make sure that New Mexico can be one of the leaders in space technology and space science in the future,” Hojati said.
Shearer said the event's success exceeded his expectations. Between 80 and 100 people showed up in person, with another 70 to 80 joining virtually, he said.
“We have high school kids, undergraduates, graduate students, individuals from the commercial sector,” Shearer said.
Activities lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and included a lecture on “Exploring the Moon with Artemis III.”
Artemis III is a space mission aimed at sending astronauts to the moon’s south pole to conduct research on its craters and expand current understanding of the moon, earth and solar system, according to NASA.
Guest speaker Brett Denevi, planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University, spoke to visitors about Artemis III via Zoom.
“The moon is this fabulous record-keeper of what was going on in the early neighborhood of the solar system,” Denevi said. “A lot of impact events on the moon were happening around 4 billion years ago. This was the time when earth was transitioning and life was beginning to emerge.”
Other departments and organizations tabled at the event, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, UNM COSMIAC, UNM School of Engineering, United States Space Force and NASA MINDS, among others.
Michael Newman, deputy at the U.S. Space Force at the Kirtland Air Force Base, said he is hoping to solidify USSF’s connection to UNM.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“We’re here today at their invitation,” Newman said.
UNM undergraduate students Trinity Griffus and Tatyana Falkowsky attended the event representing NASA MINDS, a program at NASA that funds research, design projects and competitions for students at minority-serving institutions, according to its website.
The NASA MINDS team at UNM is called “CHILI HOUSE.” The team is researching “autonomous plant growth systems for the International Space Station and beyond,” Griffus said.
NASA MINDS hoped to recruit more students to join their team during the event, Falkowsky said.
“We are a very small team. We’ve only been here four years, and we’ve won ‘Grand Champs’ nationally two out of those four years,” Falkowsky said. ”Many people don’t know that we exist, so I wanna get the word out about us.”
For the SSRGC, Shearer said Space Day was a step in making UNM an important contributor to exploring space and making New Mexico an integral part of the space economy.
“This is more than just science and engineering. We're reaching out to artists, journalists, individuals in law school and the medical school,” Shearer said. “It's a big umbrella, embracing a large population.”
Leila Chapa is the social media editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at socialmedia@dailylobo.com or on X @lchapa06
