UMKC professor chosen for NASA mission

Dr. Mark Brodwin, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been chosen as a science team member for a project sponsored by NASA.

Brodwin was a NASA-nominated candidate for the Euclid mission, which will comprise of data analysis and working with science instruments to fulfill the mission.

Euclid is a space telescope designed to probe for dark matter, which is an invisible substance that makes up only three percent of the universe.  This research could allude to what scientists believe to be a stretching of the universe at increasing speeds- caused by dark matter.

Euclid is intended to launch in 2020, spending six years mapping and locating areas in which universal stretching seems to have occurred.

NASA will be heavily involved, offering several assessments prior to the telescope’s launch, including the distribution and detailed testing of infrared flight detectors.  Infrared facilities enable scientists to expand their discoveries from previous measurements.

Brodwin is familiar with infrared techniques, having used them to discover galaxy clusters in the distant universe and further studying them through data from telescopes around the world.

rbrooks@unews.com