CAMPUS/SPORTS

PSL launches world’s largest balloon

PHOTO COURTESY OF NSBF

The National Scientific Balloon Facility, managed for NASA by New Mexico State University’s Physical Science Laboratory, successfully completed the flight of the largest balloon ever launched. The balloon, which carried a 1,500-pound payload of scientific equipment, was launched by the NSBF Aug. 25 from Lynn Lake, Manitoba, Canada, and landed Aug. 26 about 20 miles southeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.

The balloon is 750 feet tall, uninflated, and has a volume of 60 million cubic feet. NASA’s largest standard balloon has a volume of 40 million cubic feet. This recordsetting balloon reached a peak altitude of 161,000 thousand feet, compared to the standard balloon’s peak altitude of 130,000 feet.

Danny R. J. Ball, site manager of the NSBF’s headquarters in Palestine, Texas, said the balloon’s ability to ascend that high will have important applications.

“At 160,000 feet, 99.999 percent of the atmosphere is below you. That can have serious benefits for x-ray astronomy and high energy astrophysics. There’s no degradation of data from looking through the atmosphere and there’s an unobstructed view of the universe,” he said.

Steve Hottman, deputy director of the PSL and program manager for the NSBF, said the PSL worked with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., and Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, S.D., to produce the balloon. The PSL, along with Raven Industries, was responsible for quality assurance on the project. The PSL was responsible for insuring the balloon and its scientific payload fit together for a successful flight.

“This is a significant achievement, involving teamwork and advancing the state of the art and new capabilities for exploring space,” he said.

Jack King

History Department awarded $50,000 for focus grants

With two National Endowment for the Humanities Focus Grants totaling $50,000, New Mexico State University’s History Department will start to redesign the graduate curriculum and increase studies of Islam and Islamic societies.

The grants were two of only 24 awarded nationally for 2003.

History Professor Margaret Malamud received $25,000 for “Understanding Islam,” a project to provide support for New Mexico State faculty to invite and meet regularly with a series of visiting scholars in one-day workshops.

The eight development workshops will enable a group of faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences to increase their knowledge and understanding of Islam and the Muslim world. The faculty will integrate this knowledge into their classes and collectively develop a new interdisciplinary course on Islam, Malamud said.

Malamud, who is teaching a course on Islamic civilization this semester and has a degree in Islamic studies, said students in her class are noticeably more enthusiastic about the subject than they were in the past. She authored the grant proposal following the events of Sept. 11 and said she saw it as a civic duty.

“I felt a real sense of responsibility to increase knowledge and awareness of Islam and Islamic societies,” she said. “The project will provide a much needed broadening of the institution’s historic mission to promote multicultural understanding.”

New Mexico State professors from the history, English, languages and linguistics, and government departments will participate.

History professors Margaret Jacobs and Marsha Weisiger also received a $25,000 grant, “Creating Connections,” to redesign the department’s graduate curriculum around major themes, rather than traditional frameworks.

Jacobs said traditionally graduate students in history have to choose a geographical area and a period in which to focus their studies.

“That framework encourages a kind of tunnelvision, which sees the history of, say, the United States as disconnected from the history of other regions,” Weisiger said. “We hope a thematic approach will help broaden students’ views and teach them to see historical connections that they didn’t see before.”

“The new curriculum is designed to encourage students and faculty to make connections between the specific histories of particular places and larger transnational historical processes,” Jacobs said. “This will make the graduate program stronger and offer a better education for students.”

“It will help attract more grad students and great faculty,” Weisiger said. “We’re all really excited about this innovative approach.”

NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.

Julie M. Hughes ’95