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Year 1997 Issue 1	Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium	Winter 1997
	Editors: Kimberly Olson & Doran Baker

Index

Consortium Students are Flying High Again

Just days before Christmas, 1996, students from three RMNSGC schools eagerly awaited the good news that they would get the "lifetime thrill" of flying on the NASA KC-135, otherwise known as the "Vomit Comet"! These students are members of Get Away Special teams at Shoshone-Bannock High School, the University of Utah, and Utah State University. They have been involved in preparing proposals for microgravity experiments to fly on the KC-135 in April 1997. The KC-135 program is a NASA-sponsored pilot program administered by the Texas Space Grant Consortium. Twenty-four schools have been selected to fly in this pilot program, and three of these are from the RMNSGC. Each team has a number of undergraduate students and a reporter who will actually fly with the experiment, plus a supporting faculty member who will observe from the ground. The reporters, one from each school, will be the innovative educational component of this program. Students from our three schools have been working on their experiments, as well as flight certification. With less than a month before the 7 April 1997 flight date, when the campaign opens at Ellington Field in Houston, activities have increased to a feverish pitch.

Shoshone-Bannock High School, Fort Hall Indian Reservation, Idaho: Ed Galindo, the school's science teacher, leads this team which has the distinction of being the only high school to participate. (The school is in partnership with Utah State University's GAS program for this venture.) The student flyers are Nuland Titus, J. W. Dixey, Marshal White, and Sam Matsaw. The ground crew consists of Becky Edmo and Carmen Edmo, with further staff support coming from John Moller, Philip Shortman, and Roy Ivey. The thesis of the experiment is to investigate how phosphates dissolve/mix in microgravity. This topic is of importance to agriculture on future space stations, but is also relevant to Fort Hall where the phosphate mine is a major employer.

The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah: This team is led by George Pantalos, who is also leading the U of U GAS team's efforts to fly a version of the U of U artificial heart on the Space Shuttle. The flight team consists of Darren Kimoto and Lisa Book. Their microgravity experiment is a new version of their cardiovascular system. They intend to see if their approach will work and is as physiologically authentic as they predict. The extensive flight experience of Dr. Pantalos on the KC-135 has been a major asset to the RMNSGC teams in this venture and gives us a headstart in this high-flying project.

Utah State University, Logan, Utah: This team is led jointly by Dr. David Peak and Dr. Jan Sojka. The undergraduate students who will fly are: Michael Anderson, Morgan Davidson, Paul Hepworth, and Michael Sorenson. Lynnette Harris, science writer for USU News Service, will be the reporter to fly with this team. The USU microgravity experiment will measure the speed of sound through a granular material at various packing fractions. This experiment, like those for the other two RMNSGC schools, is also being developed for flight in a GAS canister on the NASA Space Shuttle.

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Project STARSHINE

STARSHINE team members gather to make plans

The Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium has recently become involved in a new endeavour to teach and excite students around the world about space, science, and mathematics. The project is called STARSHINE and was conceived by Professor R. Gilbert Moore and is headed up by the Hansen Planetarium. Students in grades K - 14 will participate in the building and tracking of a 19-inch diameter spherical spacecraft which is planned for launch in July 1998 from a Space Shuttle. The spacecraft will consist of 250 polished alluminum mirrors that will create a moving, glittering ball of light in the night sky. Bridgerland Applied Technology Center, under the tutelage of Skipp Dopp and Gerald Knight will construct the satellite. Students and amateur astronomers (worldwide) will be able to track the satellite with the naked eye and/or instruments and share their tracking data with other students through the use of a web site currently being developed by the Hansen Planetarium. The construction of the satellite has already begun with the fabrication of the 250 mirrors. Over the summer, the curriculum for teaching students about spacecraft orbits and space sciences will be developed through the cooperation of the Hansen Planetarium and Utah educators. In September, the student-polished mirrors will be placed on the satellite when the Marshall Space Flight Center Van's tour of Utah commences. Along with the mirrors, a microdot film with the names of each student, teacher, staff member, and school involved will be placed on the back of the mirrors. After a final protective coating, the spacecraft will be ready for testing and then for launch.

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Small Satellite Design & Technology
Special Courses Taught by Professor Redd

Today's "better, cheaper, faster" mandate requires up-to-date knowledge of small satellite technology and an in-depth understanding of the system engineering issues. Together, small satellite engineers and managers are given options in selecting lower cost, but possibly higher risk, appproaches to building flight hardware. Two courses on Small Satellite Design & Technology were taught by Frank Redd and Eric Hoffman. These courses were held on October 28-Nov 1, 1996 in Washington, D.C., and February 24-27, 1997 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Frank Redd

These courses covered the important technologies needed to develop lower cost space systems. In addition to including the traditional flight hardware disciplines, attention was given to integration and testing, mission operations, R & QA, and software. The emphasis was on enabling technology developments to do more with less. The courses also provided a broad technical basis for leadership in spacecraft system engineering and for managing space systems.

Dr. Redd serves as Executive Vice President of the Space Dynamics Laboratory, chaired the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Dept. at USU until June 1996, and chairs the widely-attended USU/AIAA Conference on Small Satellites. During his Air Force career he served as the System Program Director of the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) program. An AIAA Associate Fellow, Dr. Redd was Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets and chaired the AIEE Space Systems Technical Committee.

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Happenings Around the Consortium

16 Jan 97 - Visit of TARDEC official, Mr. Grant Gerhart, to the Consortium and to the USU College of Engineering.

22-24 Jan 97 - DeVore, Baker, and Tolle of the Visidyne/USU team visited TARDEC/TACOM in Warren, Michigan. They have secured USU's first imaging research grant with this U.S. Army sponsor.

18-22 Feb 97 - Engineering Week held at USU, U of U, BYU and U of Denver.

25 Feb 97 - NASA/Stennis Commercial Remote Sensing Program VIP-Affiliate site visit was held at USU. Simplot, Motorola, and Evans & Sutherland corporations participated.

26 Feb 97 - Russian Ambassador Yuli Mikhailovich Vorontsov visited USU's Space Dynamics Laboratory.

27 Feb 97 - Divers found the SDL interferometer rocket nose tip in the First Dam reservoir.

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Current Fellowship Students

Utah State University: Darin Fowers (Chuck Swenson), Scott Jones (Lyman Willardson), Kerry Nelson (Michael Taylor), William Pfaff (Doran Baker), Charles Tolle (Robert Gunderson), Fon Brown (Doran Baker & Ben Abbott)

University of Utah: Sean O'Leary (George Pantalos), David Smith (Robert Benner), Stewart Woodruff (George Pantalos), Scott Kofoed (Dwayne Westenskow)

University of Denver: Arthur Dybdahl (Herschel Newmann), Neeharika Thakur (Herschel Newmann), David Wheatley (Hershel Newmann)

Brigham Young University: Paul Johnson (David Long), Thad Morton (Brent Webb), Brian Newbold (Merrill Beckstead), Clarence Wilson (David Long)

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Board of Directors Meet

The Board of Directors of the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium met on Friday, February 28, 1997, at Utah State University. Directors planned and scheduled activities for 1997, discussed funding and budgeting, established guidelines for metrics, and reviewed programs of the Consortium. Von Del Chamberlain, ex officio member, gave an interesting presentation on meteorites and showed several that he has collected. R. Gilbert Moore, ex officio member, gave a presentation on Project Starshine and invited the Consortium members to be involved in the project. Tracy Dougher, a graduate student in the Plants, Soils & Biometeorology Department at USU, gave a special presentation on the wheat-in-space program returned from MIR.

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A Message from the Board of Directors...

I would like to take this opportunity and introduce myself as Director of the Hill Aerospace Museum. The Museum is the newest member of the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium.

The Hill Aerospace Museum is located on a 50-acre site on the north west corner of Hill Air Force Base adjacent to Interstate I-15 off of exit 341. The Museum was established in 1987 and will celebrate its ten-year anniversary in May of this year. In April of 1996, the Museum had its one-millioneth visitor and during the 1996 year over 192,000 visitors.

Hill Aerospace Museum specializes in military aviation that has connections with Hill Air Force Base. It beneifits everyone to educate the public and the school children about what the miliary offers and showing the heritage of the United States Air Force.

As the majority of the Consortium is made up of universities, they have the opportunity of shaping and preparing a work force for our nation. The Consortium makes available resources through Outreach to further student's education which in turn makes a better place for us to live.

We have the rare opportunity to see thousands of young boys and girls come into the Museum to learn how airplanes fly, how rockets are launched, and how man walked on the moon.

At the Hill Aerospace Museum we strive to kindle interest in the children that will continue to work into the university level. This furthers the education and knowledge that will mainstream into the work force where advances of the future will add to our Museum and start the cycle over again.

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Globe Workshops to be held this summer

Utah State University will host two GLOBE Workshops on the dates of June 30 - July 3, and August 4-8. Having hosted one workshop in the summer of 1996, we are looking forward to again joining with the worldwide network of teachers, students, and scientists to learn more about our environment.

Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) is a hands-on international environmental science and education program that enables teachers to engage in a collaborative, inquiry-based learning experience and then take this experience to their classrooms. GLOBE enhances teacher's efforts to integrate state-of-the-art technology into everyday class activities.

The goals of GLOBE are:

• to enhance the environmental awareness of individuals throughout the world;
• to contribute to scientific understanding of the Earth; and
• to help students reach higher levels of achievement in science and mathematics.

GLOBE provides extensive educational materials to enrich the learning experience of participating students. These materials include a wide variety of classroom and field activities and helps to relate their own local observations to global environmental issues.

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Featured Space Pioneer by Doran Baker Born: Brooklyn, NY 9 Nov 1934 BA, University of Chicago 1954 BS, University of Chicago 1955 MS, University of Chicago 1956 PhD, University of Chicago 1960 Physicist, Armour Research Foundation 1958-59 Instructor, University of California 1960-62 Assistant Professor, Harvard University 1962-68 Professor, Cornell University 1968-96 Co-Founder, The Planetary Society 1980 Died: Seattle, WA 20 Dec 1996

Carl Edward Sagen sketch by Glenn Allred

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Upcoming Events

Mar	12-15	National Council of SG Directors Meeting @ Washington, D.C.
	22	Closest Approach of Comet Hale-Bopp to Earth
Apr	24-26	AFA 50th Anniversary of Air Force Celebration @ Las Vegas, NV
May	13-15	IR Calibration Conference @ Utah State University
	29-30	Remote Sensing Workshop @ Utah State University
	Jun	10-28	Making of Engineer @ University of Denver
	12	NASA Fellowship Symposium @ University of Utah
	15-20	Space Discovery Graduate Introductory Course @ Univ. of Colorado
	17-19   Mars Workshop @ Utah State University
	22-27	Space Discovery Graduate Advanced Course @ Univ. of Colorado
	30-3	GLOBE Workshop @ Utah State University
Jul	6-11	Space Discovery Graduate Standard Course @ USAF Academy, CO
	13-18	Space Discovery Graduate Standard Course @ USAF Academy, CO
	20-25	Space Discovery Graduate Standard Course @ USAF Academy, CO
Aug	4-8	GLOBE Workshop @ Utah State University
	22	RMNSGC Annual Meeting @ Denver
Sep	13	Food for Life @ Hill Aerospace Museum
	15-18	Small Satellite Conference @ Utah State University
	26	Starshine Workshop @ Hansen Planetarium		

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