WACO, Texas (August 13, 2019) – Through an invitation from the United Nations in Vienna, Rene Laufer, Ph.D., presented an international team of experts' study results on post-mission disposal for small satellites at the 62nd United Nations – Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS) Session.

WACO, Texas (May 2, 2019) – Someday, in the not-too-distant-future, an Iowa farmer strolls out of his home and dons an augmented reality headset to view an overhead image of his crop supplied by a drone. With sweeps of his hand, he tags several small colored blotches superimposed over the spectroscopic image of his field like a weather-radar display. He summons a gangly water tanker and dispatches it to the thirsty plants and returns to the house for breakfast. Science fiction? At this point, yes, but such systems may be a reality soon, thanks in large part to the work of Dr. Marlan O. Scully in the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative’s Quantum Optics Laboratory.

Rene Laufer, Ph.D., associate research professor and head of the Space Science Lab in Baylor's Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research (CASPER), is one of the creators of a TED-Ed lesson titled "How far would you have to go to escape gravity?"

Imagine looking under your couch and instead of finding fluffy dust bunnies, you see the dust is arranged in straight lines—you might wonder what caused this order. Scientists are experiencing that same feeling, not with dust under a couch, but with electrically charged dust in the microgravity of space.