Nicholas Kruczek, an instrument engineer in the solar and stellar science division at the Laboratory for Atmospheric Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), has been named a recipient of the 2023 NASA Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in Astrophysics. The Roman Technology Fellowship is a prestigious award from the NASA Astrophysics Division that recognizes early career researchers with innovative ideas to advance astrophysics flight programs and technology.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to accomplish since I first learned about, so it’s nice to fulfill that goal,” said Kruczek.
The Roman fellowships, which give the recipients the opportunity to submit a proposal that could gain up to half a million dollars in funding over three years, are awarded in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, the first female executive at NASA. Roman created the agency’s first astronomical program and is known as the “Mother of Hubble” for her foundational role in planning NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Kruczek was selected for his work as the principal investigator of the Far- and Lyman-ultraviolet imaging demonstrator (FLUID) instrument, which will be carried on a sounding rocket for three upcoming launches.
“Dr. Kruczek is one of a very small group of early career scientists taking on responsibility for the end-to-end development of NASA flight missions,” said Kevin France, LASP researcher and associate professor in Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences (APS), who served as Kruczek’s doctoral advisor. “The Roman Fellowship acknowledges his accomplishments and is a strong endorsement for NASA’s suborbital program as a platform to develop future leaders in instrumentation and missions.”
The goal of the FLUID instrument is to look at local galaxies across four far ultraviolet channels. The short wavelength, called the Lyman ultraviolet channel, is designed to image at wavelengths below Lyman alpha for the first time. Previous instruments have been limited in this bandpass because the signal is swamped by a phenomenon called “Lyman alpha air glow.” These are emissions that occur when hydrogen atoms in the outermost region of Earth’s atmosphere are hit by light from the sun.
“Historically, we haven’t been able to image galaxies down at wavelengths shorter than that because of that air glow signal,” said Kruczek.
The shorter wavelength channel is interesting because it isolates the most massive stars in our galaxies, which are important because they are the main drivers of ongoing galaxy evolution. Scientists need to know what these massive stars look like today to help understand what the earliest galaxies looked like. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists are now getting new data on these massive stars in the earliest observed galaxies.
“But the problem is,” Kruczek said, “we don’t have local analogs to compare to, because we’ve never been able to observe galaxies in a way that we can just isolate these most massive stars, and so that’s what FLUID has set out to do.”
The FLUID instrument team identified the next steps for the project in an April 2024 Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems paper co-authored by Kruczek with LASP colleagues Nicholas Nell, Kevin France, Stefan Ulrich, Patrick Behr, and Emily Farr.
The next steps are to complete the optical system development, advance the optical and sensor technology, and to launch the instrument on three sounding rocket flights starting in 2027 to make observations of several galaxies.
“The FLUID team has been working hard to demonstrate the instrument capability, and this funding will now allow us to continue that work,” Kruczek said.
Kruczek is the fifth LASP researcher to be named a NASA Roman Technology Fellow, out of 36 fellowships awarded since the program began in 2011. The others are Briana Indahl (2022), Dmitry Vorobiev (2020), Brian Fleming (2014), and Kevin France (2012).
“I’m not at all surprised that LASP early career scientists are being selected for Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowships,” said Frank Eparvier, LASP associate director for science. “LASP has a long history of providing a very nurturing environment for hardware-oriented scientists to develop from early career through to full-fledged principal investigators, which is what the Roman Fellowship program is all about.”
Kruczek joined LASP in 2019 after completing his doctorate in APS at CU Boulder, where he conducted his thesis work on the Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS) sounding-rocket program. CHESS used ultraviolet instruments to study the interstellar medium or the matter between stars. Prior to graduate school, Kruczek earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Drexel University.
-By Sara Pratt, LASP Sr. Communications Specialist
Founded a decade before NASA, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder is on a mission to revolutionize human understanding of the cosmos by pioneering new technologies and approaches to space science. The institute is at the forefront of solar, planetary, and space physics research, climate and space-weather monitoring, and the search for evidence of habitable worlds. LASP is also deeply committed to inspiring and educating the next generation of space explorers. From the first exploratory rocket measurements of Earth’s upper atmosphere to trailblazing observations of every planet in the solar system, LASP continues to build on its remarkable history with a nearly $1 billion portfolio of new research and engineering programs, backed by superb data analysis, reliable mission operations, and skilled administrative support.