RELEASE NO: 98-50 (98-11)

NASA LAUNCHING HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIMENTS

High school students from four states will travel to the Eastern Shore of Virginia next week to see their experiments fly on a suborbital rocket mission scheduled for launch May 6, 1998 from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island.

The experiments are part of the Suborbital Student Experiment Module, a pilot program to develop a payload system that allows students in primary school through high school to propose experiments for flight and launch them aboard a NASA sounding rocket within one school year.

Lynn Marra, head of Student Programs in the Education Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., said, "The students in the pilot program have shown great ingenuity in the design and assembly of their experiments. We are very excited with the future possibilities of this new and innovative program."

Keith Koehler, Wallops project coordinator, said, "The students coming to Wallops and participating in the launch process is a major part of this program. We want to give the students the opportunity to participate and gain an understanding of all aspects of a rocket mission from experiment design through data analysis."

"During the week the students will participate in the final payload preparations, take an active part in the launch countdown and present the preliminary results. This will be a week they will always remember," Koehler said.

Four experiments will fly on a single-stage Orion sounding rocket to an altitude of 27 miles. The payload will impact in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 13 miles off the coast of Wallops Island. The U.S. Coast Guard, Chincoteague, Va., will recover the payload and the experiments returned to the students the same day of the launch.

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The experiments include the study of the efficiency of electric motor lubricants during launch, the heat transfer of materials, atmospheric measurements, and the effects of acceleration on zebra fish embryos.

The participating schools are Worcester Country School, Berlin, Md.; Southern High School, Baltimore; North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham; Sauk Rapids/Rice High School, Minn.; and Glenbrook North High School, Northbrook, Ill.. The Glenbrook experiment is serving as a backup.

The student teams submitted experiment proposals in December. At the same time, personnel from the Wallops Flight Facility began design of the payload system.Fabrication of the experiments and payloads began in late February and the experiments arrived at Wallops for integration and testing the week of April 20.

Koehler said, "The development and execution of this program has been on an extremely fast track. The student and Wallops payload teams have done a tremendous job of meeting the schedule."

The NASA payload system provides power and data recording systems to each deck and video cameras for two of the experiment decks. Each school was provided a 14-inch diameter deck plate on which to mount their experiment. The cost of the experiment components for each school varied from $20 to $250.

The pilot program is a joint effort between the Offices of Human Resources and Education, Space Science, and Space Flight at NASA Headquarters.

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