Bruce Buckingham                                                                         Sept. 21, 2001
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321/867-2468

KSC Release No. 105-01

CENTRAL FLORIDA STUDENTS EAGERLY AWAIT STARSHINE LAUNCH FROM KODIAK, ALASKA

Students from around Central Florida are eagerly awaiting the launch of the Starshine 3 spacecraft today -- they helped build the NASA-sponsored satellite by polishing some of its 1,500 aluminum "mirrors."

Launching on an Athena I rocket from Kodiak Island, Alaska, this will be the second flight of the student-built satellite. Its one-inch mirrors were machined by technology students in Utah, with the grinding and polishing of the mirrors being accomplished by students in kindergarten through twelfth grade in schools all over the world.

Students from Michael Martin's fifth-grade classes at Sebastian Elementary School contributed mirrors to each of the first three Starshine satellites. 

"When the students look into the sky, they'll think, 'My name is up there.' This made them interested in science and space again," Martin said. "The students helped with over 16 disks, this time. If NASA approves, we want to help with Starshine 4 and 5, too."

Thomas Sarnoski's class at Osceola Magnet Elementary School in Vero Beach also helped with Starshine 3. The fourth- and fifth-graders enrolled in the Challenge Center, the school's gifted program, polished two disks for over two weeks.

"The students benefited from this project because they got to work as a team," Sarnoski said. "I don't think they realized that they were contributing to something so important-they were just having fun because they knew it was a project for NASA."

The Starshine 3 spacecraft is a hollow aluminum sphere almost a meter in diameter (37 inches) and weighing 90 kilograms (197 pounds). It consists of 31 retro-reflectors and seven clusters of solar cells powering an amateur radio transmitter, as well as the 1,500 student-polished mirrors.

Participating students will visually track Starshine 3 and log their findings on the project's web site at http://azinet.com/starshine/. The satellite will produce a flash every two seconds, and students will use these flashes to track the satellite's movements. The flashes will be visible just after sunset and just before sunrise as far north as Point Barrow, Alaska, and as far south as McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The data collected will help NASA improve forecasts of satellite orbital decay.

The Starshine 1 satellite flew aboard Discovery in May 1999 on mission STS-96. Starshine 2 is scheduled to launch aboard Endeavour on mission STS-108 in November 2001. If Starshine 4 and 5 are approved, the knowledge gained from the Starshine 3 project will be used in the design for these satellites.

Schools with questions about participating in the program may contact Project Starshine's director, Gil Moore, at the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium, 3855 Sierra Vista Road, Monument, CO 80132, (telephone: 719/488-0721; email: gilmoore12@aol.com). 

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