UNM ‘Space Day’ launch was a blast

The University of New Mexico hosted Space Day recently to highlight important discoveries, advertise internships, and provide fun experiences - like walking on the planet Mars - for attendees to experience.

The event, which was part of UNM's Research & Discovery Week, welcomed UNM faculty, students, and staff to a Space Day lecture. Individuals involved in NASA and other space organizations spoke passionately about their work, highlighting UNM's decades of involvement with two National Laboratories and alien campfire stories that have had New Mexicans gazing up at the stars for over 50 years.

Charles "Chip" Shearer is a research professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences and a research assistant at the UNM's Institute of Meteoritics who oversaw the events for Space Day. Shearer said the purpose of the event was to get STEM students involved.

"We have a lot of groups both on and off campus to illustrate the number of opportunities available to students," Shearer said. "There's information on internships and employment opportunities here. We were gearing this whole workshop around students and faculty opportunities."

The workshop offered visitors a free lunch and beverages alongside multiple tables that boasted different aspects of space. A VR headset that allowed guests to see the surface of Mars sat on one table, while a Lobo rocket was disassembled on another.

A different table caught the eye of guests with a huge silver trophy. Next to it was a plan to cultivate plants for space colonization, using chile from Albuquerque's dry and arid climate to turn planets from red dust to a green oasis.

Trinity Griffus is an undergraduate in Biology and was last year's NASA MINDS undergraduate lead, taking home the trophy for UNM. NASA MINDS is a multi-semester undergraduate level challenge that provides funds to student and faculty teams from Minority Serving Institutions to design and build prototypes for technologies needed in support of the Artemis mission. Griffus attributed her success to resources provided by UNM.

"So last year out of 50 competing teams across the country, we won first place grand champions," Griffus said. "The University did an excellent job at making the project a reality and offered so many resources… at Space Day we're hoping to recruit more aspiring students to join projects like this to gain experience."

Students could tour the opportunities offered by the university and off-campus contributors like Space Force and the National Laboratories. Shearer says this isn't the first time UNM has been involved in space and that the Lobos have a long history with the stars.

"UNM always has been involved in space. In the 1940's, UNM opened up what was called the Institute of Meteoritics," Shearer said. "It was the first institute in the world that was designed for the scientific examination of extraterrestrial samples and exploration."

Shearer says the institute harbored precious meteorites and even the first samples of moon rocks after the Apollo missions. Shearer believes that Space Day served as an homage to UNM's connection with space.

"New Mexico has been involved in space exploration since the beginning of its founding. The Indigenous people of the land used astronomical observations to plan their agriculture and use as a way to tell stories," Shearer said. "Space Day at UNM was a culmination of past efforts and current projects for space exploration at the University of New Mexico."