On March 13, the Department of Physics and Astronomy presented Demos Unleashed! 2026, which showed real-life physics in action through engaging demonstrations.

A big NASA satellite will crash back to Earth on Tuesday (March 10) after nearly 14 years in orbit, experts say. The spacecraft in question is the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) Van Allen Probe A, which launched in August 2012 along with its twin, Van Allen Probe B, to study the radiation belts around Earth for which they're named.

Associate Professor Casey DeRoo has been selected as a recipient of the Iowa Mid-Career Faculty Scholar Award for 2026. The award, which is in its fifth year, provides funding and development opportunities for a cohort of tenured mid-career faculty who have established national or international reputations in their disciplines and demonstrate exceptional teaching and mentorship.

The Department of Physics and Astronomy hosted the third annual Acevedo Poster Contest on Feb. 27, giving participating students a chance to show how they used computing resources, tools, or techniques in their research.

In an effort to retain engineering staff from a $170 million project for NASA, the University of Iowa is renovating the seventh floor of Van Allen Hall to house the Iowa Spaceflight Laboratory, a collection of labs supporting the UI’s efforts in building spaceflight instrumentation for solar system exploration. Construction on the seventh floor of Van Allen could be completed as early as mid to late March.

In November 2025, the Downtown District tested a version of the idea at St. Burch Tavern with UI associate professor Casey DeRoo. The event drew a crowd of approximately 60 people and prompted the partnership to inform the Iowa City community of the variety of achievements professors are accomplishing at the university.

Assistant Professor Dustin Swarm has received an award from NASA for a project entitled “Developing a Gamma Ray Reflectometer for 511 keV Multilayer Performance Characterization."

Dustin Swarm, an astrophysicist and assistant professor at the University of Iowa, recently helped capture the first X-ray view of a white dwarf star. Swarm, in collaboration with MIT, studied the binary star system Ex Hydrae, located 200 light-years away from Earth.

Following the success of the TRACERS spacecraft launch, the Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty members are anticipating the development of the innovative Iowa Spaceflight Laboratory.

Associate Professor Allison Jaynes has received the Harriet Wenger Crafton Research funding award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) to support the Edge of Space Program during Summer 2027.