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<p align="center">Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØSystem news release</p>
<p align="center"><em>Highest honor for educators recognizes exceptional research, teaching, service</em></p>
<p>DENVER – Six University of Colorado faculty members today were named Distinguished Professors, the most prestigious honor for faculty at the university.</p>
<p>Each year, the recognition goes to faculty members who demonstrate exemplary performance in research or creative work, a record of excellence in classroom teaching and supervision of individual learning, and outstanding service to the profession, university and its affiliates.</p>

<p>Two NASA and one European spacecraft, including NASA’s MAVEN mission led by the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ, have gathered new information about the basic properties of a wayward comet that buzzed by Mars Oct. 19, directly detecting its effects on the Martian atmosphere.</p>

<p>NASA’s newest orbiter at Mars, MAVEN, took precautions to avoid harm from a dust-spewing comet that flew near Mars yesterday and is studying the flyby’s effects on the Red Planet’s atmosphere, according to Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Professor Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator on the mission.</p>

<p>NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles at Mars and produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, said Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Professor Bruce Jakosky, the mission’s principal investigator.</p>

<p>A team of scientists including a Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ professor used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a giant, oddball planet orbiting another star, an object twice as massive as Jupiter and hot enough to melt steel.</p>

<p class="p1">The spacecraft for a NASA mission to probe the climate history of Mars led by the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ slid seamlessly into orbit at about 8:24 p.m. MDT on Sunday, Sept. 21, the last major hurdle of the 10-month, 442-million-mile journey.</p>

<p>The public is invited to attend a watch party at the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ on Sunday, Sept. 21, when NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, designed to understand past climate change on Mars, inserts itself into orbit after a 10-month journey to the planet.</p>

<p>After spending nearly six months on the International Space Station, Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ astronaut-alumnus Steve Swanson is slated to drift back to Earth in a Russian space capsule Sept. 10 before banging down on the steppe of Kazakhstan.</p>

<p>Two Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ student aerospace engineering science teams have won prestigious international and national awards for the design of real-world space missions to Mars and the moon.</p>

<p>The importance of Mars exploration and how the aerospace industry partners with university researchers to advance one of Colorado’s leading economic sectors will be featured at a free program Monday, Sept. 8, in south Denver.</p>