The Florida Space Institute (FSI) is a research institute of the

State University System of Florida The State University System of Florida (SUSF or SUS) is a system of twelve public universities in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2018, over 341,000 students were enrolled in Florida's state universities. Together with the Florida College Syst ...

and the

University of Central Florida The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

located in

Orlando Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures rele ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. FSI is currently led by Interim Director Dr. Julie Brisset.

History

The Florida Space Institute, previously the Space Education and Research Center created in 1990 by

UCF The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

, was established in 1996 as a research institute within the State University System of Florida. In 2012, the institute moved from the

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

to the

Central Florida Research Park The Central Florida Research Park (CFRP) is a research park abutting the main campus of the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida, United States. CFRP is the largest research park in Florida, the fourth largest in the United Stat ...

at UCF. The move coincided with the end of the

Space Shuttle program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its ...

in 2011.

Partner institutions

The Florida Space Institute is part of a broad statewide partnership within the

State University System A state university system in the United States is a group of public universities supported by an individual state, territory or federal district. These systems constitute the majority of public-funded universities in the country. State univers ...

to support and expand Florida's involvement in the field of

space exploration Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space. While the exploration of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration though is conducted both by robotic spacec ...

. Since its move to

, the institute falls under the organizational and fiscal governance of

, though it continues to support research and development projects and services at partner institutions in the State University System as well as government and corporate institutions.

Educational partners

Brevard Community College Eastern Florida State College, formerly Brevard Community College, is a public college in Brevard County, Florida. It is a member of the Florida College System and has campuses in Cocoa, Melbourne, Palm Bay, and Titusville, as well as a Virtu ...

Broward College Broward College is a public college in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is part of the Florida College System. It was established in 1959 as part of a move to broaden Florida's two-year colleges. In 2008 it adopted its current name, reflecting that ...

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Embry may refer to: People *Aaron Embry (born 1975), American musician *Ashton F. Embry (born 1946), Canadian research scientist *Basil Embry (1902–1977), British air force commander *C. B. Embry (1941-2022), American politician *Eric Embry (bo ...

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), commonly known as Florida A&M, is a public historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida. Founded in 1887, It is the third largest historically black university in the Un ...

Florida Atlantic University Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, and satellite campuses in Dania Beach, Florida, Dania Beach, Davie, Florida, Davie, Fort Lauderd ...

Florida Institute of Technology The Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech or FIT) is a private research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. Appr ...

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF is ...

Government partners

Federal Emergency Management Agency The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Corporate partner

* Yang Enterprises

Science

Arecibo Observatory

The

Arecibo Observatory The Arecibo Observatory, also known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) and formerly known as the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory, is an observatory in Barrio Esperanza, Arecibo, Puerto Rico owned by the US National Science F ...

has the world's most powerful planetary radar system, which provides ground-based observations whose quality could only be exceeded with a spacecraft flyby. The 305-meter Arecibo telescope equipped with a 1 MW transmitter at S-band (12.6 cm, 2380 MHz) is used for studies of small bodies in the solar system, terrestrial planets, and planetary satellites including the Moon. The Arecibo planetary radar is a powerful tool for post-discovery characterization of

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...

s, planets, and moons. In addition to precise line-of-sight velocity and range information, depending on the target's size and distance, planetary radar is useful for quickly estimating the instantaneous rotation rate of near-Earth asteroids, resolving the target's size, detecting potential satellites, and ultimately resolving the shape through inverse modeling efforts. Researchers: Dr. Maxime Devogele, Dr. Estela Fernandez-Valenzuela, Dr. Sean Marshall, Dr. Anna McGilvray, Dr. Noemi Pinilla-Alonso, Dr. Mario De Pra, Dr. Charles Schambeau, Dr. Ana Carolina De Souza Feliciano, Dr. Flaviane Venditti, Dr. Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin.

Astrophysics

Radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming f ...

is the study of radio waves produced by a multitude of astronomical objects such as the Sun, planets, pulsars, stars, star-forming regions (i.e., the birthplace of stars), gas clouds, galaxies, supernova remnants, etc. The high sensitivity of the Arecibo radio telescope allows astronomers to detect faint radio signals from far-off regions of the universe. The areas of research include

Fast radio burst In radio astronomy, a fast radio burst (FRB) is a transient radio pulse of length ranging from a fraction of a millisecond to 3 seconds, caused by some high-energy astrophysical process not yet understood. Astronomers estimate the average FRB rel ...

Heliophysics Heliophysics (from the prefix " helio", from Attic Greek ''hḗlios'', meaning Sun, and the noun "physics": the science of matter and energy and their interactions) is the physics of the Sun and its connection with the Solar System. NASA define ...

and

Space weather Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the time varying conditions within the Solar System, including the solar wind, emphasizing the space surrounding the Earth, including conditions in the ma ...

Pulsar A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Ea ...

Studies,

Spectral line A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum, resulting from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used to iden ...

Studies,

Exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

s, and

Very Long Baseline Interferometry Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) is a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy. In VLBI a signal from an astronomical radio source, such as a quasar, is collected at multiple radio telescopes on Earth or in space. The ...

(VLBI). Researchers: Dr. Periasamy K. Manoharan, Dr. Anna McGilvray, Dr. Benetge Bhakthi Pranama Perera, Dr. Anish Roshi, Dr. Allison Smith, Dr. Sravani Vaddi.

Atmospheric sciences

Atmospheric science Atmospheric science is the study of the Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere and its various inner-working physical processes. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climat ...

is the investigation of the earth's gaseous envelope. Experiments performed at Arecibo measure upper atmosphere composition, temperature, and densities in order to understand the controlling physical processes. The Arecibo Radio Telescope can measure the growth and decay of disturbances in the changing layers of charged particles that populate the region known as the ionosphere ( altitudes above 30 miles ). The "big dish" is also used to study plasma physics processes in the electrically charged regions of the earth's atmosphere. where radio waves are influenced most. Researchers: Dr. Christiano Garnett Marques Brum, Dr. Selvaraj Dharmalingam, Dr. Jens Lautenbach, Dr. Shikha Raizada, Dr. Pedrina Terra dos Santos, Dr. Sukanta Sau, Dr. Michael Peter Sulzer.

Publications

* Brisset, J., Miletich, T. and Metzger, P., 2020. Thermal extraction of water ice from the lunar surface-A 3D numerical model. ''Planetary and Space Science'', 193, p.105082. * Brisset, J., Colwell, J., Dove, A., Abukhalil, S., Cox, C. and Mohammed, N., 2018. Regolith behavior under asteroid-level gravity conditions: low-velocity impact experiments. ''Progress in Earth and Planetary Science'', 5(1), pp.1-21. * Brisset, J., Heißelmann, D., Kothe, S., Weidling, R. and Blum, J., 2016. Submillimetre-sized dust aggregate collision and growth properties-Experimental study of a multi-particle system on a suborbital rocket. ''Astronomy & Astrophysics'', 593, p.A3.

References

External links

Florida Space Institute

University of Central Florida

Florida Space Grant Consortium

Arecibo Observatory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Florida Space Institute Universities and colleges in Orlando, Florida State University System of Florida University of Central Florida Space advocacy organizations 1996 establishments in Florida