USU's space dynamics laboratory: from northern utah to Deepest space.

• Author: Felix, Devin
• Position: Knowledge - Utah State University

In December 2009, a rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. On board was the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Or WISE, a space telescope on a mission to map theentire sky in infrared light and reveal distant objects that had never been seen before. Over 13 months, it captured 2.7 million images, mapping the sky one and a half times and creating a complete atlas of the celestial sphere. Among the images it captured were distant comets, colorful nebulae, neighboring aries and the coldest brown dwarf yet discovered.

Before WISE ever gazed deep into the galaxy from 325 miles above Earth, it took shape in North Logan, Utah. The telescope was one of many projects carried out by the Space namics Laboratory (SDL), a nonprofit research organisation owned

by Utah State University. For more than six decades. it has played an important role in the nation's exploration of space and its defense clgorts SDL has a record of more than 500 successful missions and cmploys hundreds of scientisls and cngincers. It has also contributed to the cducation of thousands of studenls destined for high-tech fields and helpcd establish Utah as a go to destination for high-tech acrospacc proiects.

"Some of the innovation we. are doing and the research we are doing bring a lot of notoriety to not only. SDL, but to Utah State University and to the state in general," says Niel Holt, SDI's director. "Some of the things like the WISE instrument and the discoveries it's making help the science community and bring a lot of notoriety and recognition to the state as well."

Origins

The Space Dynamices Laboratory began in the Years hust after WWII, with Amcrican experiments using German V2 rockets on Earth's atmosphere.These experiments led to the creation of the Upper Air Research Laboratory (UARL) at the University of Utah and the Electro-Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University in 1959. UARL relocated to USU in 1970 and the organizations combined in 1982 under the name Space Dynamics Laboratory.

In 1996, SDI. became a University: Affiliated Research Center (UARC) for the U.S. Department of Defense, sponsored by the Missile Defense Agency. That designation Means SDL is a go-to source

for government agencies in need of aerospace contractors.

"it provides us a contract in where they can come to us directly if what they're asking to do is within our defined core competencies," Holt says.

Though it is owned by .USU, the lab gets no fimding from the...