Nebraska Wesleyan University physics professor Nathaniel Cunningham was elated as he watched the New Horizons spacecraft make its close fly-by of Pluto last summer. The successful fly-by also meant he had more work ahead.
Since 2006, Cunningham has been a member of the Southwest Research Institute responsible for designing, calibrating and decoding data received from ALICE, an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer that captured thousands of images of Pluto.
Cunningham shared his work with the New Horizons mission at a lecture on January 26. His lecture was titled, 鈥淧roblem-Solving Literally On The Fly: The Calibration Effort for NASA鈥檚 New Horizons Mission to Pluto.鈥
鈥淯nlike science experiments and instruments on Earth, the hardware on space-based observatories like NASA鈥檚 New Horizons mission to Pluto can never be repaired or upgraded to fix glitches or provide improved capabilities,鈥 said Cunningham.
Cunningham鈥檚 lecture was selected as this year鈥檚 Faculty Scholarship Presentation, which is presented by the university鈥檚 Forum Committee to highlight the scholarship of 香港六合彩资料大全 faculty. Faculty are nominated and selected by the Forum Committee and provost.