Southwest Airlines adds Steamboat Springs to Colorado flight schedule

Southwest Airlines extended its published flight schedule from early January through April 11, 2021, adding new flights to the carrier's second Colorado destination with nonstop service to Steamboat Springs, Colo. through Hayden/Yampa Valley Regional Airport beginning Dec. 19. Flights are now available on Southwest.com and today through Aug. 20.

The seasonal service will operate Dec. 19 through April 5 with three-times daily service between Denver and Steamboat Springs, and once a day on Saturdays and Sundays between Dallas and Steamboat Springs.

"This year, customers are looking to experience more of the nation's great outdoors. By linking both Denver and Dallas nonstop to Steamboat Springs, customers across a majority of our network will be able to reach the Rocky Mountains," said Andrew Watterson, Southwest Airlines Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer.

Steamboat Springs is the carrier's 90th airport served within the United States and 104th destination across 11 countries in North America.

Nordstrom Rack plans new stores in Colorado and New York

Seattle-based Nordstrom, Inc., announced Wednesday plans to open a Nordstrom Rack at Chapel Hills East in Colorado Springs, Colo. The 31,203-square-foot store is scheduled to open in spring 2016. The property is owned and managed by DDR Corp.

When the new store opens, it will be the sixth Rack in Colorado. The company recently announced a new Rack location opening in Fort Collins in fall 2015. Nordstrom also operates three full line stores and first came to Colorado in 1996 with a store at Park Meadows.

Chapel Hill East is located in north central Colorado Springs off of Academy Blvd. Nordstrom Rack will join other tenants such as Whole Foods, DSW, Best Buy, Old Navy and Carter's.

New York

In addition to Colorado Springs, Nordstrom plans to open a Nordstrom Rack at Destiny USA mall in Syracuse, N.Y. The 33,357-square-foot store is scheduled to open in fall 2015.

Nordstrom Rack is expanding across upstate New York. The company recently announced new Rack stores opening in Buffalo and Albany this fall 2015.

The new Rack will be located on the first level next to The Cheesecake Factory and across from the Armani Outlet. Other anchors include Lord & Taylor, Macy's and JCPenney along with a great mix of specialty and off-price retailers such as H&M, Saks OFF 5(th), T.J.Maxx and DSW among others.

Nordstrom Rack is the off-price retail division of Nordstrom, Inc., offering customers a wide selection of on-trend apparel, accessories and shoes at an everyday savings of 30-70 percent off regular prices.

Student Rocket Launch event in Colorado

More than 100 students of all ages will put their rockets and payloads on display high above the plains of Pueblo, Colo., during the seventh annual Student Rocket Launch on Saturday.

The launch will feature three high-power sport rockets built by interns at United Launch Alliance (ULA) that will carry science experiments thousands of feet above the ground. The five largest payloads are built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. interns. K-12 students from Colorado, Ohio and Alabama created 13 additional payloads. This year's rocket team includes approximately 65 interns from ULA and 45 interns from Ball.

The event will take place at the Hudson Ranch, located just outside of Pueblo. Attendees are invited to view the rockets up-close on the launch pads beginning at 8:30 a.m. MDT, with the first launch at 10 a.m. The final launch will occur at noon.

The Rockets

"The Future" is the largest rocket launched in Colorado, standing 25-feet tall and weighing 320 pounds. It will soar to approximately 9,000 feet above the ground, carrying 15 payloads. The "Stars 'N' Stripes" is a 20-foot rocket that will carry two payloads, and "Atlas IV," at 10 feet tall, will deploy one payload.

"The Student Rocket Launch provides one of the most in-depth, hands-on educational opportunities for interns in the country," said Matt Smith, ULA's vice president of Engineering and Information Technology.

The Future, Stars 'N' Stripes and Atlas IV are all built and refurbished by ULA summer interns in Centennial, Colo.; Decatur, Ala.; Harlingen, Texas; Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.; and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The interns volunteer to work on the rockets outside of their "day jobs," building and testing the rockets with the guidance of ULA employees who participate as mentors.

The Southern Colorado Rocketeers, Colorado Springs-based rocketry club and Northern Colorado Rocketry also will be launching rockets throughout the event. This year, the event also coincides with the 56th Annual National Association of Rocketry Annual Meet.

The payloads

This year's concepts include: a self-correcting rock-climbing car that's "driven" back by "Batman"; R/C controlled para gliders; a self-inflating balloon; a chalk cloud; and smoke grenades, environmental suites, cooling systems and many other sensors and cameras.

"The rocket launch aspect of the 10-week internship demonstrates their understanding of the teamwork needed to become future leaders," said Jeff Osterkamp, Ball's vice president for Engineering.

The Future rocket payloads include a class teddy bear (named "S. Carpenter Bear" after the astronaut from Colorado), an experiment to test post-launch dispersion of bar-coded Alabama cotton bolls, and payloads designed to capture images and data using cameras, Global Positioning System, geographic information system, altimeters, accelerometers and other devices.

Aircraft converge over Denver to support air quality study

Two NASA aircraft are participating in field campaigns beginning this month in Colorado that will probe the factors leading to unhealthy air quality conditions and improve the ability to diagnose air quality conditions from space.

The NASA aircraft will be joined by a research aircraft from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for flights July 16 to Aug. 16 from the Research Aviation Facility maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.

The main study area extends from Denver to Fort Collins and as far as Greeley. This area contains a diverse mixture of air pollution sources that include transportation, power generation, oil and gas extraction, agriculture, natural vegetation and episodic wildfires. The region being studied often experiences ozone levels in summer that exceed national health standards.

NASA's contribution to the effort is called DISCOVER-AQ, which stands for Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. The Colorado study is the final stop in a series of four field studies by the DISCOVER-AQ team focused on areas across the United States that routinely experience poor air quality. Previous flights focused on the Baltimore-Washington area (2011), California's San Joaquin Valley (2013), and Houston (2013).

These detailed observations of air pollution from the surface up into the atmosphere will help improve the capability of future satellites to monitor air quality around the world. The combined studies will produce an unprecedented level of detail for understanding air quality over a metropolitan area.

NASA's twin-engine King Air from Langley Research Center will fly at 27,000 feet, looking downward with remote sensors to measure the amount of gaseous and particulate pollution below the aircraft. A P-3B Orion from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility will sample the vertical distribution of gaseous and particulate pollution by profiling from 1,000 and 15,000 feet above the surface over selected monitoring sites on the ground.

For the Colorado flights, the DISCOVER-AQ mission is collaborating with a second study, the Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Experiment, or FRAPPE. Jointly sponsored by the state of Colorado and NSF, FRAPPE will include the NCAR/NSF C-130 research aircraft, as well as additional activities on the ground.

While the DISCOVER-AQ aircraft will be dedicated to sampling over ground sites, FRAPPE will have much more freedom to direct the C-130 to different locations as conditions warrant.

Forest Service needs aircraft for aerial patrols in Colorado

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is looking for a light fixed wing aircraft fully operated by qualified personnel and equipped to meet Forest Health Aerial Detection Survey services for use in the administration of public lands. [Full story]

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