The University of Kentucky joins with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on May 15 to connect students in Kentucky and beyond with Mars exploration, flight on Mars, the "BIG BLUE" Inflatable Wings project, women in engineering, and Internet2.

Internet2? What's that?

Internet2 (or I2 for short), is the advanced networking consortium that provides the research and education community the capacity to move data at an extremely high rate, allowing participants to interact in real time and share both information and video quickly and in high quality. Innovative applications include sharing telescopes, microscopes and other resources that would otherwise be unavailable.

Unlike our "commodity Internet," which anyone with an Internet connection can use, I2 use is restricted to its education/research membership. That provides the opportunity to build partnerships, develop research, and provide outreach. Find out more at the I2 Kentucky website.

Special thanks to Dr. Andrea Hoyt, Adherent Polymer Projects Manager at Adherent Technologies Inc., for providing the new UV-curing tape samples for this I2 activity.

Adherent Technologies, Inc. (http://www.adherenttech.com/) was founded in 1990 as a materials research and development center.  Over the past 15 years the company has developed several products, processes, and technologies that are now readily available for commercial sale.  Products include specialty polymers and processes for use in high-performance composites, coatings, foams, sensors, and recycling of polymer based scrap.

Adherent Technologies worked with ILC Dover, Inc. providing the UV-curing resin that was used in the inflatable wings tested at high altitude in BIG BLUE I (2003) and BIG BLUE II 2004. The BBII wings were exhibited as part of the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Exhibit, “Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance” from 2005 – 2006.