Aspiring scientists touched down at the University of Iowa for the Edge of Space Academy, an immersive course fueled by a legacy of astrophysics research.

For two weeks over the summer, the University of Iowa was Mission Control.

Undergraduate students from across the United States came to campus last July, enticed by the prospect of stewarding a mission to explore Earth or space. The students were the first group to enroll in a new class, called the Edge of Space Academy, offered by Iowa as another marker of its living, breathing legacy in space-based research.

In an intense, compressed time frame, the students would seek to plan and complete their own mission, just like full-time scientists involved in real-life NASA exploratory journeys. Along the way, they would learn how to build instruments, assemble electronics, create computer code, operate a payload, guide a drone operator or a jet pilot, collect and analyze data, and report results to decorated scientists and stalwarts in their fields.

Read more at https://stories.uiowa.edu/aspiring-researchers-come-to-iowa-for-edge-of-space-academy.