Launched in 1987, the University of North Dakota Department of Space Studies — part of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences — started out as a teaching-only division.

Since then, with a series of stunning accomplishments in such areas as asteroid studies and space ship simulation, it’s become widely known and respected as “the little department that could” in one of the most complex, high-tech fields around.

Today, with almost 100 graduate students — most online — UND Space Studies is brimming with excitement about the future.

“We have lots of online students literally all over the world,” said David Whalen, associate professor of space studies and department chair.

“In a given online class, we might be talking with a student in the Far East one minute, then several students in the ‘sandbox,’ or Iraq,” said Whalen.  “In fact, we have around eight students at any one time among the American military personnel stationed over there.  Our online students come from all over the place, from all walks of life, in all age brackets, and with varying degrees of sophistication.  It’s a very broad cross section of people who take our online courses in space studies.”

“Our dozen graduate students on campus are your more ‘typical’ graduate students,” Whalen continued.  “They tend to be recent bachelor’s degree grads, most often in their early to mid-20s.  But we draw all kinds of majors into space studies:  anthropology, English, geology, geography, engineering, political science, and, of course, many aviation majors.”

The past few years, the department has attracted about 20 new students annually to minor in space studies.  They also come from majors across the campus.

“We get bigger numbers — 60 to 70 at times — taking some of our popular first- and second-year courses, such as Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Mike Gaffey’s recent dinosaur course,” Whalen said.

Gaffey, an asteroid expert, studies the dinosaur era because it gives clues about asteroid impacts on earth.

“Courses should teach — that’s our basic mission — but we also believe, especially for first- and second-year students, that the ‘entertainment’ value of a course also is important,” Whalen said.  “We want to encourage learning while having some fun.”

A key part of that fun is the department’s multidisciplinary approach to the curriculum.

“We have people in the policy field, in management, in engineering, and in science,” said Paul Hardersen, associate professor of space studies.  “So instead of us being known in just one field, for example physics, we’re known in multiple fields.  And that expands the base of people who are exposed to us, and that helps us grow our reputation.”

Whalen is careful to point out that space is not just about NASA; the military and commercial space sectors are where a lot of the action is.   And that’s a critical factor for students wanting to minor, or get a graduate degree, in space studies.

Bottom line: UND Space Studies is thriving and looks to a promising future.

“We’re doing very well,” Whalen observed.  “It’s a relatively small department, but it’s in the top five at UND as far as the number of graduate degrees awarded on an annual basis.”

In the future, Whalen said, UND Space Studies would like to recruit a lot more military people into the program because they’re prime candidates for the curriculum.  They’re also looking at offering more courses of a week or month in duration.

But there are some challenges.

“I’d say a big one is that there are many big expectations and perceptions,” Whalen said.  “For too many people, ‘space’ means human space flight.  And that’s simply not the case.  Landing a man on the Moon was a stunt — there was no payoff, really.” 

However, he continued, some great science has come out of all the unmanned probes, satellites, and telescopic research that’s gone on, and that’s dramatically increased the interest in space studies.

“We know so much more today about our solar system that we didn’t have much of a clue about before the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957,” Whalen said.

The science of astronomy has advanced geometrically since Sputnik.  Some of that science is being done within UND Space Studies, where researchers, such as Gaffey and Hardersen, and graduate students, such as Vishnu Reddy, are investigating various aspects of the history of the solar system and beyond.

“What we’ve found out is that the universe is a really violent place, which we didn’t expect,” Whalen said.  “Our previous view of the stars, the universe, was that it was all rather stately.  But really, it’s extremely explosive, and we’re learning a lot more about that.”

Then there’s the business side of things, where opportunities range from working within the aerospace industry to working with the telecomm giants that operate communications and television satellites.  More recently, private space ventures have begun to make waves in space.

“Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip One (the first successful privately launched trip into space) was a stunt, but it’s a stunt that’s going places,” Whalen said.  “SpaceShip One was wonderful.  It went up to 100 kilometers and came back.”

UND Space Studies’ spaceflight simulator center, developed by research associate Pablo de Leon, a veteran of the international space industry, is a perfect setup to train the next generation of commercial space aviators.

For sure, Whalen said, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for budding space scientists — and for UND Space Studies, where they can prepare for those exciting, out-of-this-world careers.

“That’s why we see our department growing with increasing demand for space studies,” Whalen said.  “There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.  UND Space Studies has lots to offer: courses in the law, politics, policies, the military uses of space, and courses that combine applications and policy.

“And that’s on top of the tech and engineering-related courses we offer in space suit design and space flight,” he continued.  “We have students in the Air Force Space Command who say that most of what they learned at UND was a revelation to them.”

Finally, there’s a side of space studies that focuses more on looking back than looking outward.  That is the environmental applications of UND Space Studies, not just remote-sensing weather or spy satellites but remote sensing of the environmental degradation taking place right under our noses.

“You can take lots of pictures on the ground, even from airplanes, but the only truly global perspective is from space,” Whalen explained.  “Somewhere between the applications and the science, we’re recognizing that we’re that pale blue dot in space.  We’re looking at our world and realizing that it’s fragile, and seeing what we’re doing to the planet and what the planet is doing to itself.

“The fact is, today’s commerce depends on space.  So I think that bodes very well for the future of this department.”

This simulator of NASA’s upcoming Orion spacecraft was built by students in UND’s Space Studies, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering Departments.  It can simulate launch, orbital operations, and landings for the Orion, which NASA plans to use to send human explorers back to the Moon as part of its Constellation program.