Last week, Morehead State University's Appalachian Space Technology and Research Advancements Conference, or ASTRA-Con, highlighted eastern Kentucky's impact on space science.
The three-day event was planned and executed by MSU students. Emily Ballantyne is a Mission Operations Engineer, Spacecraft Officer and organizer of ASTRA-Con. “This is our very first ASTRA-Con. As a student, I pitched this to Dr. Malphrus when I was a graduate student here. We ended up really busy. They hired me on as full-time staff working on mission operations, writing flight software, and then we kind of had a little bit of a lull and decided to pick it back up and host ASTRA-Con,” said Ballantyne.
Included in Friday’s full day of proceedings was keynote speaker Bill Nelson, Administrator of NASA. Nelson was introduced by Kentucky Representative Hal Rogers, who announced he's requested that congress allocate $10 million to fund Morehead State’s satellite tracking operations.
In Nelson's McBrayer Presidential Lecture, he explained to the crowd the significance of the orbit MSU students and staff are studying. The orbit is called a near-rectilinear halo orbit or NRHO.
“It’s a polar orbit, it’s an elliptical orbit, and it’s the same orbit that the eventual lunar space station that we’re going to put up there called Gateway is going to be in. But you need to know something about this orbit, we’ve never been in that orbit. So, there’s a spacecraft up there right now called CAPSTONE that your university is communicating with," said Nelson.
The Gateway orbit is going to be a elliptical seven-day NRHO around earth's Moon. Officials said it will be humanity's first space station in lunar orbit to support NASA's deep space exploration plans.
Jacobo Matallana, a Space Systems Engineering student said he and other students get the opportunity to participate in space 'firsts'. “In terms of like, active projects were working on, we’re currently communicating with CAPSTONE which is something that was mentioned today in the talk. We are also working with Intuitive Machines which will be the first commercial lander on the moon,” said Matallana.
Officials said Morehead State’s space science and astrophysics students have the privilege of learning in a hands-on-environment that gives them an edge in the job-market. Such an opportunity is made possible through the help of staff and a mix of university and government funding.
Ground Station Operator at MSU, Chloe Hart, said, “Being a student and getting this hands-on experience before you even graduate is incredible experience, and these funds will just make it more accessible.”
More information on MSU's Space Science programs can be found here.