PSU in SPACE!

FIND YOUR PLACE IN OUR UNIVERSE

With a control center where students can talk to astronauts, a rocket club that is building Oregon’s first satellite, the northwest’s largest meteorite collection and more, Portland State offers unique opportunities for students who want to explore the universe. 

Read on to learn more about space research at PSU
NASA-PSU Telescience Support Lab, Portland State Aerospace Society, We in Space, ELVIS microscope, Cascadia Meteorite Lab

NASA-PSU Telescience Support Lab

At the NASA-PSU Telescience Support Lab PSU researchers and students help astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) conduct experiments in real-time.

WHY IT'S COOL
While researchers can make predictions about how new technology will behave in space (and test them in PSU’s very own drop tower), they can’t know for sure until astronauts have a chance to try them out. With the Telescience Support Lab, scientists can guide astronauts as they perform experiments with prototypes sent to the ISS from PSU.  

“It's very surreal. It's a very cool experience,” says Marc Wasserman ‘20, a master’s student in mechanical engineering who has used the Telescience Support Lab multiple times to conduct experiments for his master’s thesis. “I feel really lucky to have been able to be in the room during the experimental runs.”

In July, astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough completed tests of a hydroponic plant water management system that Wasserman has been working on. “Fluid in space tends to want to make balls—think giant droplets,” says Wasserman. “By using a very, a very specially shaped container, we were able to get the fluid to stay where we wanted it.” 

Eventually, researchers hope this work leads to the development of a lightweight, reusable system that astronauts can use to grow plants in space sustainably.

While these experiments are still in the technology development stage, Wasserman’s research may have far-reaching implications—far-far-reaching implications actually. 

“For a  mission to Mars, for example, it would be really great if you could send out one set of hardware and a bunch of seeds,” he says. “The farther away you're going the more advantageous it is to have a lighter weight, more reusable system.”

GOOD TO KNOW
Wasserman, who graduated from PSU in 2020 with a bachelor’s of science in mechanical engineering, recommends that students go to professors’ office hours to learn about their research. That’s how he first got involved in fluid mechanics research.

“If you find a professor who's doing something that's super interesting, keep an eye on it and let them know that you're potentially interested in future research opportunities,” he says.  

FUN FACT
The astronauts who tested out Wasserman’s hydroponic growing chambers used fruit punch and felt plants to simulate actual growing conditions. 

Portland State Aerospace Society

 The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS for short) is an interdisciplinary student-led aerospace engineering group that builds sophisticated, open source rockets and satellites. 

WHY IT'S COOL
PSAS students work together on state-of-the-art aerospace technology, all while learning marketable job skills. This spring or summer the group will head to central Oregon to launch their most recent rocket, Launch Vehicle 3 (LV3). Meanwhile, the group is already hard at work on LV4, a rocket that is pushing the boundary of what’s possible for so-called “amateur” rocketry. The LV4 design includes a liquid fuel engine that will take the rocket up a whopping 100km, to the edge of space. 

Also amazing? PSAS students have designed, built, and are about to hand-off Oregon’s first satellite (OreSat). Spaceflight, a Seattle company, will be dropping off their satellite in low earth orbit sometime in January. And in late 2022 another satellite designed by PSAS will be launched by NASA from the International Space Station. This satellite will collect data about the global distribution of high altitude cirrus clouds as part of a NASA climate science mission.

GOOD TO KNOW 
“PSAS is militantly interdisciplinary,” says Andrew Greenberg, a faculty advisor for PSAS. Unlike aeronautics clubs at other universities that are typically made up of mostly aerospace engineers, PSAS is home to all sorts of different majors. “We've got people from physics and math; we've got some business folks who are helping with management and finances,” says Greenberg, noting that PSAS also welcomes high school students, community college students and industry professionals. 

With the collaborative nature of PSAS students learn how to work together successfully in teams, skills that serve them well in college and beyond. 

“We build rockets and we build better students,” says Greenberg. “The students get hands-on, interdisciplinary, team-based education. They get experience that they would get nowhere else, except in an actual job.” 

FUN FACT 
No fewer than 30 PSAS alums now work in the aerospace industry.

We in Space

We in Space is a student group for women, gender minorities, and allies to connect, learn about different aspects of the aerospace industry and participate in outreach activities to increase diversity and inclusion in the space industry. 

WHY IT'S COOL
 We in Space screens virtual movie nights, hosts speakers like Alice Bowman—the mission operations manager for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond—leads outreach activities for Girl Scouts and local high schoolers and even created an aerospace career day that was live streamed on YouTube to 270 middle, high, and college students. 

“Our motto is: Find your place in space,” says Catie Spivey ‘21, co-founder of We in Space and master's student in mechanical engineering. “It's really important to show students of all ages that they can go on to get jobs in the industry. You don't have to be an engineer to go into a space career. You don't have to be an astronomer. You can be a marketing major, a finance major, even a fashion major. There are so many different areas that you can go into that people don't really hear about.”

GOOD TO KNOW
“​​We welcome all gender identities,” says Spivey. “We welcome everyone that's interested in helping the industry improve.”

FUN FACT
Spivey is a recipient of the prestigious Brooke Owens Fellowship. As part of the fellowship, she spent the summer interning with rocket manufacturer United Launch Alliance. Spivey plans to work on the aerodynamics of launch vehicles (what she calls the “outside bits of rockets”) after she graduates with her master’s from PSU.

ELVIS microscope

ELVIS is a new type of microscope that will be delivered to the International Space Station in 2023. ELVIS was developed by Jay Nadeau, associate professor of physics, and her research group by combining a holographic microscope and light-field microscope. 

WHY IT'S COOL
Astronauts in the international space station will use ELVIS to study how bacteria behave in microgravity. Unlike traditional microscopes, ELVIS will allow astronauts to watch bacteria swim in three-dimensional space.

“The cool part is they're going to relay everything live and the astronauts will show us a video of what they're doing, and so we should be able to control the instrument from the ground and see the data as they're being collected,” says Nadeau.

ELVIS has the potential to answer some important questions about how being in space changes bacteria. “In theory, microgravity should not affect bacteria. They're too small,” says Nadeau. “Yet, starting with the very earliest experiments on the space station, people have found the bacteria act very differently when they've been exposed to microgravity and that includes things like salmonella becoming much more dangerous.”

These changes can be bad news for astronauts. “People tend not to know this, but astronauts get pretty sick. They suffer from a lot of intestinal infections, respiratory infections, urinary tract infections,” says Nadeau. “So it's really of great interest to astronaut health to find out how bacteria are affected by microgravity.”

GOOD TO KNOW
Nadeau says students have been instrumental in developing ELVIS and will help work out the logistics that will make the microscope operational from space. “We have to make sure that we're not giving anybody a computer virus,” she says. “We have to set it up so that we can have custom software and be able to operate that software from the ground via a link to the ISS.” 

The most challenging part may actually be sending bacteria to the space station without putting the astronauts at risk of potential biosafety hazards. “We want to send up a sealed sample chamber of bacteria inside, but the question is, can you seal them up and have them still be happy?” asks Nadeau. 

FUN FACT
“Our eventual goal is to find life in outer space—in or around another planet,” says Nadeau. 

Cascadia Meteorite Lab

The Cascadia Meteorite Lab at PSU is home to about 2,400 distinct meteorite samples, including meteorites from the asteroid belt and Mars. 

WHY IT'S COOL
"Portland State has the largest publicly accessible meteorite collection in the Pacific Northwest,” says Alexander Ruzicka, professor of geology. Ruzicka started the lab in 2003 along with Melinda Hutson, research assistant professor, and Richard Pugh, a teacher at Cleveland High School and meteorite enthusiast. Unlike most other university meteorite collections, which start from a large donation of meteorites, the Cascadia Meteorite Lab began with a single specimen.  

Having this collection at Portland State means that PSU students have the unique opportunity to study and classify actual meteorites. 

“A good chunk of the meteorite samples are not yet classified so they do not have names,” says Ruzicka. “When a student works on one of these unclassified meteorites, they are the first people to really see what it is. That’s fun and exciting.” 

Meteorites are also more than cool rocks from space—they are clues to answering big questions about the universe. “From meteorites, we learn things about the origin and evolution of the solar system,” says Ruzicka. “We don't have any [Earth] rocks from the earliest formation of the Earth—it's all wiped out. If you want to learn about solar system history, it's best actually to look at meteorites.” 

GOOD TO KNOW
Ruzicka teaches several space-related courses including Exploring Mars, Astrogeology, Frontiers in Planetary Science, and a seminar on Meteorites. 

PSU also offers a Space and Planetary Science Minor for students bitten by the space bug. 

FUN FACT
Think you might have found a meteorite? The Cascadia Meteorite Lab offers meteorite identification as a public service (follow these steps first!). The lab receives about a dozen emails a week from people who think they’ve found a meteorite. Ruzicka estimates that only one to two percent of these rocks end up being actual meteorites. 

But sometimes the requests pay off in big ways. Recently someone contacted the lab about an unusual rock that they thought might be a meteorite. It turned out to be a rare and unusual lunar meteorite—and the lab’s first moon rock to classify. This single meteorite has sparked a new research path for Ruzicka. 

“That's the kind of thing that can happen with meteorites...there's no way that you could launch a mission to the moon to get a rock like this. This is serendipity,” says Ruzicka. “Suddenly we have this really interesting rock, and I've got collaboration started on it, and it's all from this guy contacting us.”