#University of Minnesota

Research out of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) and Smithsonian Institution is exploring an out-of-this-world approach to preserving Earth’s animal species in the event of a global disaster—storing animal cells on the moon.

A University of Hawaiʻi telescope on Maunakea will play a key role in a newly approved $19.5 million NASA space mission that will put an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth. The star will be a satellite that scientists will use to precisely calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of objects ranging from nearby stars to distant explosions of supernovae in far-off galaxies. As part of the NASA Landolt Space Mission, astronomers at the UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) will utilize observations to generate fresh star brightness catalogs.