* Astronomy

A recent grant from NASA will enable the Arkansas Centre for Space and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arkansas to continue its work creating missions to asteroids and exploring the possibilities and chemistry of water on Mars as part of the nation's space effort.

The centre received a grant of $1 million from NASA for its operations.

"We are very grateful to the university and to our congressional delegates for making this possible" - Derek Sears, director of the centre and University Professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

The Hera spacecraft will carry a collector designed, developed and built at the University of Arkansas by Sears, engineering professor Larry Roe, and chemistry and biochemistry professor Robert Gawley, as well as space centre graduate Melissa Franzen, who was recently the first student to graduate with a doctorate from the new space and planetary sciences program. Physics professor Claud Lacy and his student, Kathy Geitzen, are studying potential target asteroids for Hera using ground-based astronomy.

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