Kletzing was the principal investigator for NASA's TRACERS mission, landing the largest research grant in the university's history. The University of Iowa-led NASA mission will help us better understand space weather and prepare for the next solar superstorm.

The University of Iowa has won the single largest externally funded research project in its history, a $115 million contract awarded to Craig Kletzing, professor in the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy. A team led by Kletzing will study the mysterious, powerful interactions between the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth.

For more than 20 years, physicist Craig Kletzing has flourished as a researcher at the University of Iowa, where his work using rockets and satellites to learn about Earth’s auroras has yielded an astounding contract award from NASA. Iowa also offered Kletzing the opportunity to teach a wide range of physics courses—a source of personal reward he wasn’t guaranteed elsewhere.

Kletzing appeared on a segment of Science Friday in 2012 to explain what causes eerie chirping noises recorded inside Earth’s radiation belts.