Photo gallery: New spaceflight laboratory further positions UI as national space science leader

The University of Iowa has opened its new Iowa Spaceflight Laboratory, a $7.2 million investment to expand space flight instruments and to further position the university as a national leader in space science.

The newly renovated seventh floor of Van Allen Hall will be used by dozens of faculty, students, and research staff to design, build, fabricate, and test hardware and instruments for future space missions. Expertise will span from a state-of-the art machine to assemble aerospace printed circuit boards, which are critical to supporting electronics on instruments and spacecraft, to specialized vacuum chambers used to calibrate instruments that measure space radiation.

"It makes us very competitive in this space," says Casey DeRoo, associate professor and director of research operations with the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "It also ultimately means savings to taxpayers because we can execute projects for lower costs than other institutions."

The creation of the Iowa Spaceflight Laboratory comes on the heels of Iowa physicists' success with TRACERS, the $171.6 million NASA-funded mission to study the mysterious, powerful interactions between the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth. That mission, which launched in July 2025, is expected to yield its first public discoveries through peer-reviewed studies expected to be published in June, says David Miles, TRACERS principal investigator and associate professor and deputy director of research operations in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

The lab also is part of the department's physics service centers, which means it is open for use by those at the university as well as external clients.

"We have a huge capability to be able to design, build, test, and integrate the spacecraft instruments that we need for upcoming missions, all within Van Allen Hall," says Greg Howes, chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

View the photo gallery by photographer Tim Schoon.