Christian Hansen's image of the TRACERS mission launch won first place in the faculty/staff/researcher category of the Capture Your Research! Photo Competition.

Sponsored by NEXUS | Artineers and the Lichtenberger Engineering Library at the University of Iowa, Capture Your Research! is an image competition where students, faculty, and staff submit one image that captures the essence of their research. They were judged on originality/creativity, appeal of the image, relationship between the image and their research, and the clarity of the written description.

Hansen, an Aerospace Project Engineer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, shot video of the July 23, 2025  launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 that sent the TRACERS mission into orbit, capping off an eight-year effort from mission concept, design, build, test, and finally orbit. The launch streak photo titled "TRACERS, Dr. Craig Kletzing’s Legacy" is a composite image of thousands of video frames stacked together to produce one single streak that shows the rocket’s trajectory as it races towards low Earth orbit. The video was taken 12 miles away from the launch site, and the rocket at the end of the streak is at an altitude of 36 miles.

TRACERS, the University’s largest ever single award, is a NASA-funded mission led by the Department of Physics and Astronomy to deliver a pair of identical satellites each hosting a suite of science instruments to study magnetic reconnection and its effects on Earth’s atmosphere. TRACERS was initially led by Dr. Craig Kletzing and was the culmination of Dr. Kletzing’s career, but sadly he passed away before launch. Dr. David Miles took over for Dr. Kletzing, whose health was declining and led the team to the finish line. To commemorate Dr. Kletzing’s legacy, one of his personal guitar picks was embedded into the science computer on each satellite. The TRACERS satellites and the researchers involved work to carry out his legacy through scientific discovery. 

The awards were presented at the Capture Your Research Awards Ceremony and Reception on Nov. 6 at the Old Capitol Museum. See all the 2025 winners in this gallery.