News & Events

Announcement of NASA’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) Solar Eclipse Ballooning Intercollegiate Challenge (2022-2023 academic year) The Challenge Propose, then build and test, a stratospheric spacecraft (AKA a “payload”) to study aspect(s) of a solar eclipse, to be test-flown by the U of MN’s ballooning team into the stratosphere (above MN) one year in advance […]

Next Launch Window: September 27, 2022 Saturday, September 3, 2022, Artemis One launch scrubbed due to liquid hydrogen fuel leak. First attempted flight of NASA’s Artemis One Space Launch System (SLS) “Moon Rocket” was rescheduled from August 29, 2022, due to fuel temperature problems. Mission duration: 42 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes Total distance to […]

High-power rocketry teams from 11 colleges and universities gathered in Wyoming, Minnesota, on Saturday, May 21, 2022, to deliver oral presentations to a panel of judges. On Sunday, May 22, 2022, the teams flew their “fleets” of rockets at the Tripoli Minnesota Rocketry Club launch field near North Branch, Minnesota.   Congratulations to the following […]

High-power rocketry teams from 11 colleges and universities will gather in Wyoming, Minnesota, on Saturday, May 21, 2022, to deliver oral presentations to a panel of judges. On Sunday, May 22, 2022, the teams will fly their “fleets” of rockets at the Tripoli Minnesota Rocketry Club launch field near North Branch, Minnesota (if weather and […]

The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium is pleased to announce the top three teams for the 2021-2022 “GLEAM Lunar Robotics” intercollegiate challenge. * First Place * Winona State University Lunar Scouts  * Second Place * Concordia College Moorhead Lunar Robotics Team  * Third Place * Minnesota State University Moorhead The Land Dragons  Congratulations […]

The Future is Alive! “Physics Lessons From Biology” Jennifer Ross, Ph.D. Physics Department Chair Syracuse University Zoom Recording from Tuesday, April 12, 2022 Augsburg University Imagine a world where potholes in roads seal themselves like cuts in your skin, your body reports directly to your doctor on pain and medication, and we can explore and […]

On Saturday, March 26, 2022, the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium held a statewide Student Symposium at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. In-person attendees gathered at Akerman Hall. Sessions were also streamed on Zoom for remote attendees. This year’s symposium marked the inclusion of in person presentations and exhibits. The first symposium, in March 2021, […]

Saturday, March 26, 2022 9 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. (in person in Akerman Hall (map) or on-line on Zoom (links in abstract booklet)) The nearest parking (though not the least expensive) is in the Washington Avenue Parking Ramp. NASA’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) presented a free, day-long student symposium for students to share about […]

High-Power Rocketry (remote) Lessons are now finished, and rockets are flying! Five of the rockets built during this fall’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium High-Power Rocketry (remote) Lessons program were taken to the Tripoli, Minnesota, launch site near North Branch and launched on December 4, 2021. The remaining rockets will be flown in the spring. To […]

 For students enrolled in Professor Tonnis ter Veldhuis course at Macalaster College it literally is all about rocket science. In this physics course the lab is learning how to design, simulate, build, and launch a high-power rocket. The course covers standard material such as Newton’s laws, conservation of energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, oscillations, […]

The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium and Tripoli MN, a local high-power rocketry club, has now announced rules for the 2021-2022 Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocketry Competition. This intercollegiate competition, entitled the “Return to Flight: Fleet Challenge,” should appeal to teams of both new and experienced high-power rocketry students, allowing them to demonstrate their design/build/fly “chops” […]

Channel 45 (ABC) featured Panos Delton, a University of Minnesota senior, and stratospheric ballooning hardware at the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium booth at the Minnesota State Fair. The MnSGC regularly has a day-long exhibit on STEM Day on the first day of the Minnesota State Fair. Typically the exhibit includes student-built aerospace hardware, such as […]

James Flaten and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities ballooning team, assisted by Erick Agrimson and the St. Catherine University ballooning team, offered a learn-to-do-stratospheric-ballooning workshop for high school physics teachers from GO4ST8. The teachers constructed two payloads containing multiple cameras, stand-alone sensors, and microcontroller-logged sensors suites, then helped launch them on a weather balloon on […]

NASA’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) is pleased to announce the “MnSGC 2021-2022 GLEAM Lunar Robotics Intercollegiate Challenge.” Challenge website: https://m.dept.aem.umn.edu//msgc/MN_Space_Grant_GLEAM_Lunar_Robotics_Challenge_2021_2022/ In this challenge, which will run from October 2021 through March 2022, teams of students will develop small electronic sensor suites which will be carried by miniature radio-controlled surface vehicles to explore an unknown, […]

Concordia College Graduate and Continuing Studies is offering a free robotics workshop consisting of a 100% virtual NASA-in-the-Classroom professional development activity. The workshop is open to all Minnesota K-12 educators (and, space permitting, education majors). Participants will receive a free Sphero robot and join their class as they learn how to integrate coding into their […]

Despite pandemic-related challenges, teams from eight colleges and universities and one high school were able to complete the 2020-2021 Minnesota Space Grant Consortium Exploration-Flying Quadcopter Challenge. Congratulations to all! Judges ranked these teams as the top three: First Place: Minnesota State University Moorhead Second Place: Century College Third Place: Hill-Murray High School Here is a […]

The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium hosted a statewide Student Symposium on Saturday, March 27, 2021 – see link to “abstract booklet” (including recorded video links) posted below. This day-long virtual event included talks from 24 individual students and student teams who have been working on MnSGC-sponsored projects during the past year. There were also talks […]

Looking for the March 26, 2022, MnSGC Symposium instead? Click here: https://www.mnspacegrant.org/student-symposium-2022-03-26/   The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium hosted a statewide Student Symposium on Saturday, March 27, 2021 – see link to “abstract booklet” (including recorded video links) posted below. This day-long virtual event included talks from 24 individual students and student teams who have […]

On Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. The car-sized rover is set to have a mission duration of at least one Mars year, which is about 687 Earth days. Perseverance is tasked with seeking out signs of ancient life and collecting rock and soil samples for possible return […]

Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainties in Minnesota (and around the country), the Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocketry Competition for the 2020-2021 school year needed to be cancelled. We are optimistic that by late summer 2021 we will be able to propose a new competition for the 2021-2022 academic year. Stay tuned!

NASA recently created the Artemis Team, which is a group astronauts from diverse backgrounds that are planning to walk on the Moon in 2024. This mission will involve the first ever woman to walk on the lunar surface and will be focused around scientific objectives. Furthermore, this mission will prepare NASA for their next large […]

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Touch-And-Go (TAG) spacecraft launched on Sept. 8, 2016, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and it plans to return to Earth in 2023 with a surface sample from the asteroid titled “Bennu.” OSIRIS-REx is expected to make contact with on Bennu and it is tasked with gathering 2 ounces of regolith from […]

At 4:50 a.m. PDT on July 30, NASA successfully launched the Perseverance rover from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Perseverance rover was launched on a ULA Atlas 541, which should carry it to the Jezero Crater on Mars where the rover will proceed to explore the landing site region for one […]

In the summer of 2020 a “Minnesota-Modified” Rover Observation and Drone Survey on Mars (MN-ROADS) student challenge was held with multiple middle school groups from the Minneapolis Public School District. Over the course of six weeks student teams worked with teachers and MnSGC higher education teaching assistants to learn how to code mBot robots then […]

** Preamble ** Here is a “doable in the days of COVID-19” student competition you might be interested in. Participants will learn about drones, soldering, microcontroller programming, electronic sensors, and more. If you have questions, contact Thelma Berquo tberquo@cord.edu at Concordia College – Moorhead. First steps are (1) sign up a faculty adviser no later than the […]

Comet NEOWISE passed closest to the Sun on July 3 and will pass closest to the Earth on July 23. It is the brightest comet visible from Minnesota in over 10 years. It should be easy to spot (under reasonably dark-sky conditions) at least through the duration of July, and probably beyond that, as it […]

On March 27 to March 28, nine teams were scheduled to get together and compete in a drone challenge. This challenge required students to work together to learn how to use CAD software, 3D print parts, and to code and wire microcontrollers to build a remote controlled drone that is tasked with navigating an area […]

Space-X is planning on launching their first crewed mission to the International Space Station. Inside of the Crew Dragon capsule, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be launched into space using Space-X’s Falcon 9 rocket, which has be tested extensively over the past couple of years. The Crew Dragon spacecraft can fit seven […]

Freshmen students in AEM 1301: Lighter-Than-Air RC Vehicles built and flew multiple styles of RC blimps, including one rigid airship, during the fall of 2019. The class exhibited some of the vehicles they built in the Balas Atrium of Akerman Hall on Dec. 10. Photo Credits: CSE

The MnSGC and Tripoli MN, a local high-power rocket club, hosted the 2018-2019 Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocket Competition on May 18 and 19, 2019. In this competition college student teams designed and built high-power rockets to go supersonic but as “efficiently” as possible. Team presentations about rocket designs were held at the Split Rocks […]

States from the Midwest Region of NASA’s Space Grant program will hold a public videocon on November 14 containing three back-to-back “Short Talks.” The three topics for this videocon are (a) Make to Innovate: Use of hands-on learning in STEM Education, (b) SmallSat Swarm Proximity Operations: Herding Cats Might be Easier!, and (c) Measuring Light […]

The MnSGC and Tripoli MN, a local high-power rocketry club, are hosting the 2019-2020 Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocket Competition in May of 2020. In this competition college student teams will design, build, and fly a high-power rocket to accomplish a “photography/altitude” challenge in which they will try to minimize roll during ascent to get […]

Michele A. Brekke will be doing a meet & greet in the Gary Balas Atrium on October 4, 2019 from 10 to 11:45 a.m. She will be sharing her journey through her career and taking questions afterwards. Brekke is an AEM alumna (B.S. ’75, M.S. ’77) and now a flight manager for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner operational […]

On Monday, April 29, 2019, college/university students around the nation were invited to watch a live-stream of “The Future in Space” featuring NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and including a link-up with astronauts on-board the International Space Station. If you missed the webcast, you can watch a recording of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW-j7XGb2yc  

States from the Midwest Region of NASA’s Space Grant program held a videocon on April 19 containing three back-to-back “short talks.” The three topics for this videocon were (a) Teaching Introductory Physics Using High-Power Rocketry, (b) Doing Plant Genetics Research on the ISS, and (c) Using Rideable Hoverboards for “Astronaut Training.” See this flier for […]

On Monday, April 15, 2019, at 10:00am in the Hoversten Chapel on-campus at Augsburg University, the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium jointly hosted a guest lecture by the renowned Dr. Pamela Ronald. Pamela Ronald is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center, University of California, Davis. Ronald studies rice genes […]

At approximately 1:53 PM Central Time on Monday, November 26, flight controllers and mission operations specialists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) received word from the pair of experimental Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats about the successful touchdown of the InSight lander on Mars’ Elysium Planitia. The spacecraft’s journey from Earth lasted almost seven months […]

The MnSGC is co-sponsoring a lecture by Roger Launius, Chief Historian for NASA and Senior Curator of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (now retired), in the Best Buy Theater in Northrop Auditorium on the U of MN East Bank campus at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. This free public lecture is entitled […]

Students in AEM 1301: R/C Airships built and flew multiple styles of R/C blimps and also two miniature rigid airships during the fall of 2018. The “light rigid” was genuinely lighter than air (without its envelope) whereas the “heavy rigid” used both lifting gas and lifting motors to get off the ground. The class exhibited […]

Six college/university rocket teams, coached through a high-power rocket build using video-delivered lessons from the MnSGC at the U of MN – Twin Cities, launched their dual-deploy kit-rockets at the Tripoli MN launch field near North Branch on Nov. 10, 2018. This fall’s teams are from Bethel University, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Paul College, University […]

Members of the U of MN (extracurricular) Rocket Team, many of whom got their start in rocketry through MN Space Grant freshman seminars, won the Alka-Rocket challenge at the Houston Space Center on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017. Their rocket, powered by gas produced by alka-seltzer tablets dissolved in water, soared over 400 feet – establishing […]

The High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) is a NASA sponsored program supported by the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium and NASA’s Balloon Program Office which allows 12-13 groups of students to build and test payloads on a scientific balloon flight for several hours at a time. The University of Minnesota has flown on HASP once a […]

The MnSGC is helping sponsor a visit of Colonel Pamela Melroy, USAF Ret. and former NASA Astronaut, to the U of MN at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30, 2018. This event is free, but pre-registration is required. For more details and a link to the registration website, go to http://dept.aem.umn.edu/info/spotlight/Melroy_Lecture.shtml.

In the fall of 2017 a team of physics majors at Macalester College, along with physics professor Tonnis ter Veldhuis, established a high-power rocketry team. They took “video lessons” offered by MnSGC’s James Flaten and (student) Danny Toth at the U of MN – Twin Cities and built a dual-deploy high-power rocket (pictured) which they […]

Fourteen freshmen from the College of Science and Engineering at the U of MN – Twin Cities got their first taste of (stratospheric) spaceflight on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017, when their science payloads were carried to 100,000 feet on two weather balloons. The MN Space Grant promotes student interest in spacecraft-building and spaceflight by regularly […]

On August 21, 2017, the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities’ Stratospheric Ballooning Team participated in a nation-wide effort by over 50 colleges and universities to live stream a solar eclipse from the balloon-borne video cameras in the stratosphere. The team launched five high-altitude balloon stacks from Kenesaw, NE, and set up ground stations in […]

The University of Minnesota – Twin Cities’ Stratospheric Ballooning Team participated in an eclipse exhibit at the U of M’s Physics and Nanotechnology Building in conjunction with the Bell Museum of Natural History on Sunday, August 13. The event was hosted in an effort to educate the general public on the much-anticipated solar eclipse that […]

On November 7, 2017, former astronaut Daniel Brandenstein visited the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities to award Astronaut Scholarships to two undergraduate students, Merrick Pierson Smela and Rahul Parhi. The scholarship was created in 1985 by the Mercury 7 astronauts to encourage the study of science and engineering. These scholarships are awarded to students […]