Special Events

International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is an annual, worldwide celebration and an opportunity to take notice of the Moon’s beauty. Join us for an evening of Moon viewing and lunar activities for all ages. Scientists and staff from the LASP Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) will be available to answer questions and discuss the latest in lunar discoveries and research. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information on the Boulder InOMN celebration, please contact LASP Education and Public Outreach at epomail@lasp.colorado.edu.

LASP began in 1948, initially operating at CU Boulder as the Upper Air Laboratory. Since those early days launching payloads on V-2 rockets in the deserts of White Sands, New Mexico, LASP has grown to become the world’s only research institute to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system, and to Pluto.

Come celebrate 70 years of exploring the Earth, our solar system, and beyond.

We’ll have tours of all our facilities and LASP Director Daniel Baker will present a colloquium on the history of LASP at 4 p.m. in the SPSC building.

Watch the colloquium presentation on YouTube

With funding from NASA, the Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres, and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) studies the dusty plasma environments around airless bodies within the interplanetary medium, and includes partnerships with CU Boulder’s departments of physics and aerospace engineering sciences, CU LASP, the Colorado School of Mines, and international collaborators.

The January 30 Industry Open House event provides an opportunity for aerospace contractors with high-speed impact testing needs to view the Lab’s facilities.

Join us at LASP, where the GOLD instrument was designed and built, as we celebrate the launch of the Ariane 5 rocket and the SES 14 satellite that will carry GOLD onboard for its science mission. GOLD (for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk) is the first NASA science mission to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite. GOLD is scheduled to launch at 3:20 p.m. MST from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is an annual, worldwide celebration and an opportunity to take notice of the Moon’s beauty. Join us for an evening of Moon viewing and lunar activities for all ages. Scientists and staff from the LASP Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) will be available to answer questions and discuss the latest in lunar discoveries and research. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information on the Boulder InOMN celebration, please contact LASP Education and Public Outreach at epomail@lasp.colorado.edu.

After almost 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, carrying the LASP-built UltraViolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS), will conclude the final chapter of its remarkable story of exploration as it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere.

Since April 2017, Cassini has completed a daring series of orbits that was, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Following a final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan on April 22, Cassini began a series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and the rings. No other mission has ever explored this unique region.

On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back new and unique science to the very end. After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft will burn up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission launched successfully on November 18th, 2013 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. After 10 months of travel, the spacecraft is preparing to make its most important maneuver of the mission, when its velocity will be decreased by over 1,200 m/sec in an effort to draw itself into the gravitational pull of the Red Planet.

Join us at LASP, as we celebrate this monumental occasion and watch as the CU-Boulder-led mission enters into orbit and begins its primary science mission to make unprecedented discoveries about Mars’ upper atmosphere and solve the planet’s climate mystery. We’ll have speakers and commentators, who will guide us through the orbit insertion process in conjunction with the live NASA TV broadcast.

The 22nd Cluster workshop was combined with the THEMIS mission for a third time, based on the highly successful previous meetings in New Hampshire in 2008 and Corfu, Greece in 2010. This year , the workshop incorporated presentations from the ARTEMIS mission. Science from other geospace and space plasma missions and ground-based and simulations studies were… Read more »

The Moon has influenced human lives since the dawn of time. International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is an opportunity to take notice of the Moon’s beauty and share that experience with one another. Join us for an evening of Moon-viewing and lunar activities for all ages, and “wink at the Moon” with us in… Read more »

Join us for an evening of talks and activities surrounding the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). Dr. Bruce Jakosky and Dr. David Brain will talk about Mars science and the MSL mission. The landing will be shown on NASA TV, with landing narration done by Mr. Bill Possel and Dr. Jeff Parker. Following… Read more »

SME was launched thirty years ago and operated successfully for over seven years. It made major contributions to our understanding of atmospheric science, with special emphasis on ozone processes. The SME mission introduced new concepts in managing and operating small satellites, and prepared many students for their ultimate career.

This two-day workshop will bring together experts in solar physics and variability and experts in climate studies to examine the current state of research and remaining open questions at the intersection of these fields.

LASP will host a Planetary Decadal Survey town hall meeting to discuss the results of the recently released National Research Council findings related to key questions for NASA research and mission priorities.

A new era in space exploration is underway: an era driven by commercial human spaceflight. From suborbital tourism to commercial orbital research stations to commercial lunar expeditions, humans are poised to reach into space in unprecedented ways. Join this discussion of how the new space era is reshaping our view of humanity’s relationship to space exploration!

Speakers will include:
Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Corporation
Alan Stern, former NASA executive and New Horizons mission PI

Join us at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics as the MESSENGER spacecraft executes a 15-minute maneuver that will place it into orbit around Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and initiating a one-year science campaign to understand the innermost planet.

Speakers will include:
Mark Lankton from LASP-The Messenger Mission
Clark Chapman from the Southwest Research Institute-The Planet Mercury

The Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies (CCLDAS) will host a “First Dust” open house on Friday, March 4th from 4 – 6 p.m. The event, which will take place in the Nuclear Physics Laboratory High Bay of the Science Learning Laboratory, will commemorate the commissioning of the new 3 million volt dust accelerator.