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Banner image: CU Boulder undergraduate students, left to right, Adrian Bryant and听Rithik Gangopadhyay work in the mission operations center for IXPE. (Credit: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)

This month, Kacie Davis got a rare treat for a fan of all things outer space. 听

The 2020 CU Boulder alumna was one of the first people on Earth to watch as new data streamed from an object called SMC X-1鈥攁 type of pulsar, or the collapsed remains of a star that blinks on and off in the night sky.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a super interesting object,鈥� said Davis, who graduated with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in astronomy.听

Today, Davis works at the (LASP) at CU Boulder as a flight controller for a new NASA mission called the (IXPE). Over the next two years, Davis and her colleagues will manage the day-to-day mission operations of the spacecraft, which launched on Dec. 9, 2021 Eastern Time from Florida. They鈥檒l send it commands, tell the $214 million satellite where to point and for how long and monitor its health and safety at all hours of the day.听

The team had set its sights on SMC X-1 to help calibrate IXPE鈥檚 three identical telescope lenses. But as the mission ramps up, it will explore objects like pulsars, supermassive black holes and more in previously unimaginable detail. Davis, at least, can鈥檛 wait.

鈥淚 learned about IXPE when I was still a student, and I thought, 鈥楾hat satellite is going to do the coolest science,鈥欌�� Davis said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 measuring things that no one has been able to measure before.鈥�

NASA鈥檚 Marshall Space Flight Center leads the overall IXPE mission with the Italian Space Agency as a partner. The Colorado-based Ball Aerospace built the spacecraft.听

Over LASP鈥檚 more than 70-year history, teams of undergraduates have worked side-by-side with professionals to operate numerous spacecraft and do data processing鈥攆rom tiny 鈥淐ubeSats鈥� to NASA鈥檚 $600 million planet hunter, the Kepler Space Telescope. For IXPE, the students sit in a mission operations center on the CU Boulder campus complete with rows of glowing monitors that light up every time the spacecraft makes contact with the ground.听

鈥淭hese sorts of missions are an opportunity for students to get involved with a launch and the excitement that goes into it, and that can foster an interest in space that will last a lifetime,鈥� said Jerry Jason, director of mission operations and data systems at LASP.听

Mary Wells, a senior studying physics, has certainly caught the space bug.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like what you see in movies,鈥� said Wells, a command controller on the IXPE team. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a real feeling of being involved in something bigger.鈥�

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For Wells and many of her colleagues, that cinematic experience peaked just before midnight in Colorado on Dec. 8.

Most of LASP鈥檚 regular staff had gone home for the night, but the atmosphere was still buzzing outside the institute鈥檚 main mission operations center on the CU Boulder campus. Nearby, snacks and coffee sat out on a table next to a cake that declared in blue icing, 鈥淕o Go Little IXPE.鈥� Inside the control room, Wells and five other operators followed the livestream of the launch from NASA鈥檚 Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a big screen.听

鈥淵ou could feel the anticipation in the room,鈥� Wells said. 鈥淓verybody started clapping when the rocket went up.鈥�

From there, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying IXPE soared over the Atlantic Ocean, making a sharp turn east at the Equator. Just above Kenya, the moment that the IXPE team had been waiting for arrived: The spacecraft separated from its rocket then fanned out four solar panels. 91制片厂 11:30 p.m. Mountain Time, IXPE sent its first data back to Earth鈥攅verything was A-OK.

鈥淲hen we saw those solar panels deploy, you could hear a sigh in the room,鈥� said Jordan Gage, a senior studying aerospace engineering who was working with Wells in the operations center on launch night. 鈥淚f the solar panels don鈥檛 deploy, your spacecraft won鈥檛 work. We would have basically put a rock in orbit.鈥�

Turning on the lights

Gage鈥檚 journey began when he was growing up in Greeley, Colorado. His dad used to read him books on astronomy and calculus to put him to sleep when he was an infant. But Gage never thought much about the people who actually drove the multi-million-dollar spacecraft that collect data about the universe.听

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 even realize that was a job until I got into it myself,鈥� he said.

In his freshman year, Gage applied for and joined a cohort of about 20 students who LASP recruited to staff its multiple operations centers. The institute currently operates two more big NASA endeavors, the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) and the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) missions. The students spent an entire summer learning the ins and outs of spacecraft operations鈥攆rom how engineers keep components warm in that chilly environment to how satellites turn using thrusters and spinning motors. In all, 23 students currently work in operations at the institute.听

In the weeks since the launch, the team has been going through the slow process of commissioning IXPE, flipping on the spacecraft鈥檚 various subsystems one by one.听

As far as Gage is concerned, 鈥渁 boring night is a good night.鈥�

Both Gage and Wells said their time at LASP has helped to prepare them for what will come next.听

Davis is eagerly watching IXPE鈥檚 next steps. On Jan. 11, the , Cassiopeia A. The team will spend roughly three weeks peering at this object, which looks in NASA images like an iridescent bubble in space. It鈥檚 the remnant of a supernova that exploded centuries ago鈥攚hat Davis called 鈥渢he beautiful leftovers of the death of a star.鈥�

As Wells put it, 鈥渢he job is a lot of writing reports and debugging code, which can be taxing. But a lot of it is also commanding the spacecraft and doing other exciting things. It鈥檚 really cool to be able to do that as an undergraduate.鈥�