[meteorite-list] Student Science Instrument Selected For Ride To Pluto

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:53:35 2004
Message-ID: <200212172006.MAA18768_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/121702.htm

STUDENT SCIENCE INSTRUMENT SELECTED FOR RIDE TO PLUTO
New Horizons Adds Student-Designed Dust Counter
December 17, 2002

It's a 20-year homework assignment, but you won't hear any complaints
from the students handed the task.

A special instrument, called the Student Dust Counter, has been added
to NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Designed
by students at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the device will
detect dust grains produced by collisions between asteroids, comets
and Kuiper Belt objects during New Horizons' journey. It would be the
first science instrument on a NASA planetary mission to be designed,
built and "flown" by students.

With faculty supervision, University of Colorado students will also
distribute and archive data from the instrument, and lead a
comprehensive education and outreach effort to bring their results
and experiences to classrooms of all grades over the next two
decades. Students in schools and universities nationwide will be able
to share in both the development of the instrument and analysis of
its data.

"The Student Dust Counter is an incredibly exciting addition to our
mission," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern,
director of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Studies
Department in Boulder. "Not only will it give us the most detailed
accounting yet of dust particle concentrations in the outer solar
system, it will offer generations of students a real, hands-on role
in a pioneering NASA space mission. I am thrilled that NASA's Office
of Space Science approved this addition to New Horizons and I hope it
opens the door to student-led experiments on more missions."

Now in preliminary design, New Horizons is planning for launch in
2006 or 2007, a swing past Jupiter, and an encounter with Pluto and
its moon, Charon, as early as July 2015. In the following years it
will explore from one to three icy, rocky mini-worlds in the Kuiper
Belt, billions of miles beyond Neptune's orbit. The nuclear-powered
probe's payload includes cameras and sensors for imaging the surfaces
of Pluto, Charon and Kuiper Belt objects, mapping their compositions
and temperatures, and studying Pluto's complex atmosphere in detail.

Though the dust counter is part of the mission's education and public
outreach program - rather than the main science payload - it will in
fact contribute significant science. Because no dust detector has
ever flown beyond 18 astronomical units from the Sun (nearly 1.7
billion miles, about the distance of Uranus), the Student Dust
Counter's data may be as valuable to researchers as the project's
outreach focus is to students.

"Those measurements will give us a better handle on the sources and
transport of dust in the solar system," says New Horizons Project
Scientist Dr. Andrew Cheng, of The Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

First proposed to the New Horizons team last spring, the Student Dust
Counter underwent a successful design review in October. NASA
approved the project in November and the instrument is set for
another, more detailed review next spring. Like New Horizons' other
six instruments, the Student Dust Counter must be completed by summer
2004 for installation on the spacecraft and rigorous testing.

"We have our work cut out for us," says Gene Holland, an aerospace
engineering graduate student at the University of Colorado and the
instrument's student project manager. "But at the same time, that's
what makes the project so exciting. We have a lot of responsibility
on a major space mission. The students feel like what they're doing
will make a real difference."

Now that NASA has approved the dust counter's addition to the
spacecraft, Holland says the team designing and building the device
will expand from four to nearly 20 graduate and undergraduate
members. It will include engineering and science students - of
course - and others studying for careers in business, education and
communications. "We want to involve students in every aspect of this
project," Stern says. "This is a multi-generational student
experiment. The current team will build it, but future generations
will operate it, analyze the data and publish results."

And they're ready to get started.

"The students are jumping up and down about this - they can't wait to
get involved," says Dr. Fran Bagenal, a professor in the University
of Colorado Department of Astrophysical, Planetary & Atmospheric
Sciences and the science leader on the New Horizons education-public
outreach team. "They are going to build it, they are going to examine
the data, and they are going to tell other students how this works
and why this is so cool. They have a unique opportunity to both
educate and inspire the students who will follow them, because there
are kids in kindergarten today who could be working on this when New
Horizons reaches Pluto."

Click here for more information on the Student Dust Counter project.
http://www.colorado.edu/PublicRelations/NewsReleases/2002/2000.html

For photos of the student team and a diagram of their instrument,
click here.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/121702_pix.htm

**********************************************
 
New Horizons is the first mission to Pluto, its moon, Charon, and the
Kuiper Belt of rocky, icy objects beyond. Principal Investigator Dr.
Alan Stern, director of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Space
Studies Department, Boulder, Colo., leads a mission team that
includes major partners at the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.; Stanford University, Palo
Alto, Calif.; Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder; NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. APL manages the mission for NASA and will design,
build and operate the New Horizons spacecraft. SwRI is responsible
for scientific instrument development, science team management and
the mission's scientific investigations.
Received on Tue 17 Dec 2002 03:06:54 PM PST