LASP has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious Aviation Week Laureate Award for Workforce based on its unique, hands-on Mission Operations & Data Systems (MO&DS) training program for CU-Boulder students. The winner of the award will be announced at a formal ceremony in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 2013.
The annual Laureate Awards recognize individuals and teams for their extraordinary accomplishments in aviation and space sciences. LASP was nominated in the Workforce category for its MO&DS Flight Operations student program, which trains and certifies undergraduate students to send the commands and monitor the health of on-board NASA satellite systems and instruments. By working closely with LASP professionals, students help operate over a billion dollars of on-orbit space hardware and gain hands-on spacecraft operations experience before entering the workforce
Bill Possel, MO&DS director at LASP, said, “LASP is an extraordinary research university institute because it has, for more than three decades, integrated students into the operations of flying NASA spacecraft. In this way, CU-Boulder students acquire a more profound training experience than they could ever hope to obtain in a classroom alone.”
The program has certified over 150 CU-Boulder students, many of which have been recruited by employers such as NASA, DoD, NOAA, and numerous aerospace contractors. Students at LASP are currently performing mission operations for the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT), the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission, and the Kepler spacecraft searching for Earth-like planets in the Galaxy.
The 2013 Laureate Awards will be based on accomplishments made in 2012. The annual Aviation Week ceremony involves aerospace industry pioneers and leaders worldwide.
For more information on the Aviation Week Laureate Awards, please visit http://events.aviationweek.com/current/lau/about.htm.
To learn more about LASP MO&DS student involvement, please visit https://lasp.colorado.edu/mission-ops-data/.
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