Students and teachers in grades K-12 interested in the project
should log onto a web site and register before July 15, said Mike
Murray of the Montana Space Grant Consortium at Montana State
University-Bozeman.
The site is http://www.montana.edu/msgc/merope/.
Students can provide their name, school and hometown via the web
site. The submissions will be compiled onto a small compact disc
and rocketed into space with the satellite.
"Our emphasis is on students, but all Montanans are welcome to
send their names into space on Montana's first satellite," Murray
said.
The miniature cube-shaped satellite, which measures just four
inches on each side, is named MEROPE for Montana Earth Orbiting
Pico Explorer. It's being designed and built by students in the
new MSU Space Science and Engineering Lab in Bozeman.
The lab gives students hands-on experience building inexpensive
space hardware and may help fill an employment gap in the space
technology industry created by a generation of engineers reaching
retirement age, said MSU research professor and lab director
David Klumpar.
The 60 MSU graduate and undergraduates students have until July
to finish and test the satellite before sending it to a private
launch provider in Ogden, Utah.
From there, MEROPE and about a dozen other mini-satellites built
at other universities will be put into launch tubes and delivered
to a launch site in Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Republic. In
November, a Russian Dnepr rocket will carry the satellites into
space.
Once in space, the Montana satellite will repeat the science
experiment done in 1958 by Explorer 1, the United State's first
earth-orbiting satellite, Murray said. By measuring radiation
levels in space, Explorer 1 helped discover the Van Allen
radiation belts--doughnut-shaped wedges of intense radiation that
surround the Earth.
MSU students will control the orbiting satellite from Bozeman,
and others can track the satellite's progress through the web
site.
In addition, university students will begin visiting Montana
classrooms next fall to talk about MEROPE and other
"pico-satellites" that may be developed in the future, Murray
said. As plans for future Montana-based space missions unfold,
K-12 schools will have a chance to become involved.
Possible activities include building ground stations at schools,
allowing classes to directly downlink data from other satellites,
and designing, building and flying high altitude balloon
payloads.
The MEROPE project is funded by the Montana Space Grant
Consortium and NASA EPSCOR.
For more information, contact Murray at (406) 994-7309 or by
e-mail at murray@physics.montana.edu.
