ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 25, 1996 TAG: 9611250001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HAMPTON (AP)
SOURCE: JUDI TULL (NEWPORT NEWS) DAILY PRESS
TWO TIDEWATER MIDDLE SCHOOLS will participate in a NASA mission to feed photos from space onto their computers.
Imagine sitting in your classroom before a computer screen and controlling a camera aboard the space shuttle orbiting high above the earth. Students at two Tidewater middle schools will do just that this winter.
Crittenden Middle School in Newport News and Yorktown Middle School in York County will participate in a NASA mission that will feed photos from space to their computers via the Internet.
The schools are among 13 in the nation in which students can use their math, science and technology skills in the KidSat program in January.
``Students will choose a subject they want to study, such as rain forest burning or river pollution, and analyze shuttle photos of that region as part of their research,'' said Shelley Canright of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. Canright will coordinate the project with the Hampton Roads schools.
The goal of the program is to give middle school students a chance to observe Earth from space while conducting their own scientific inquiries based on their classroom studies, according to a NASA news release.
Melia Hellman, who will coordinate the program at Crittenden Middle School, said 90 eighth-graders will make up the school's KidSat team.
``It's an authentic experience for them. They're so excited that they'll be able to do something just like NASA scientists. It really will be an integration of all the skills they're learning,'' she said.
At Yorktown Middle School, students in grades six, seven and eight will have to apply to be part of the 30-member KidSat team, said Betsy Overkamp-Smith, the school district's spokeswoman.
Simple Logic, a local business, donated four computers valued at $7,800 to Yorktown Middle School so students can participate, she said.
Students will have to calculate the longitude and latitude of the areas they want photographed and feed the formulas to the spacecraft. The photos will be taken by a special camera in the Atlantis crew cabin, and the students will have to complete a series of complex steps, exactly following NASA protocols, in order to view the pictures on the Internet.
During the mission, each step in the students' process will be critical, because without the proper commands, NASA will not allow access to the control file.
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