Children can include names on Montana's first satellite

MSU News

5/7/01 BOZEMAN--A miniature satellite now under construction at Montana State University and scheduled for launch in November will carry into space the names of Montana school children.

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.