UCA alum David James was a member of the “Student Dust Counter” team at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
He worked with the physics department in the early 2000s with a revolving team of up to 20 students to create the SDC, which is being used on the New Horizons spacecraft mission to Pluto.
The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter is an instrument aboard the NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto, launched in 2006.
As it travels to Pluto and beyond, SDC will provide information on the dust that strikes the spacecraft during its fourteen-year journey across the solar system.
These observations will advance our understanding of the origin and evolution of our own solar system, as well as helping scientists study planet formation in dust disks around other stars.