A small, optically reflective spherical "STARSHINE" spacecraft is being built by Utah high school students for deployment from a Hitchhiker canister in a Space Shuttle orbiter into a highly inclined low Earth orbit in late 1998. One thousand mirrors are being polished by middle school students all over the world for mounting on the surface of this spacecraft to reflect sunlight to observers on the Earth.

After deployment, this spacecraft will be observed against the star background by student volunteers around the world during morning and evening astronomical twilight periods, and they will record its right ascension and declination at precise intervals. They will exchange their sightings with each other via the Internet and amateur satellite radio and calculate the spacecraft's orbital elements by the "angles only'' method of LaPlace. From day to day, the orbit of the spacecraft will change, due primarily to Earth's geodetic irregularities and atmospheric drag. The students will compute and remove the orbital changes due to geodetic terms and calculate the density of the atmosphere at the spacecraft's orbital altitude. After a few months, the spacecraft will re-enter the atmosphere and vaporize. If this experiment is successful, additional spacecraft will be flown annually throughout the next sunspot maximum period to measure the response of the earth's atmosphere to changes in solar activity.

The STARSHINE spacecraft consists of a hollow aluminum sphere, 19 inches (48 cm) in diameter, covered with 1000 polished, coated aluminum mirrors, each one inch in diameter. It will be mounted in and deployed from a 20-inch-diameter (50 cm) Get Away Special canister with a Hitchhiker ejection system. The weight of the sphere will not exceed 150 pounds (68 Kg); its exact value will be determined by a tradeoff between the priorities of orbital lifetime and atmospheric density measurement sensitivity. (A heavier sphere will stay in orbit longer but will be less sensitive to atmospheric density variations.) The weight of the sphere will be set by the project team after NASA assigns STARSHINE to a specific orbit.

The spacecraft's longitudinal axis will be maintained parallel to the Earth's local magnetic field by on-board, and it will be spun about that axis by solar photon pressure photon vanes that are coated to produce alternating patterns of high and low optical absorptivity and emissivity. Induced eddy currents in its aluminum shell will limit its spin rate to a value of approximately one revolution every minute.

The STARSHINE program is being coordinated by member institutions of the Rocky Mountain Space Grant Consortium in cooperation with NASA's Education Division, the Utah Department of Education, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the Colorado Space Education Initiative, the US Air Force, amateur astronomers, amateur radio operators, and various international education groups. All parties will utilize the Internet as the primary medium for disseminating instructions to observers concerning spacecraft sighting methodology and computational techniques and for collecting observations and sharing orbital predictions during the project's operational phase.

Specifically, Utah State University's (USU) Space Dynamics Laboratory is designing the spacecraft structure and mirrors. High school students at the Bridgerland Area Technology Center in Logan UT are manufacturing the structure and mirror blanks. The Dixie Middle School in St. George, UT is adapting the mirror polishing design process for middle school student use, with assistance from Logicon-RDA in Albuquerque, NM and from the Optics and Photonics Branch of the Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base, UT. Graduate students in USU's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department are leading the orbit determination and atmospheric density calculation effort, with assistance from the Phillips Laboratory of the U.S. Air Force in Albuquerque NM and Analytical Graphics, Inc., of King of Prussia, PA. Azinet is developing an Internet web page for the project. The Hansen Planetarium of Salt Lake City, UT is developing curriculum materials for school children in grades 6-12, in cooperation with USU and the science end technology specialists in the State of Utah Office of Education. NASA is providing a Space Shuttle Hitchhiker flight for the STARSHINE sphere.

Updated information about the project will be published on the STARSHINE homepage at http://www.azinet.com/starshine the ONLY OFFICIAL HOMEPAGE for Project STARSHINE.

Questions about the project should be directed to the STARSHINE Project Director, Prof. R. Gilbert Moore, 3855 Sierra Vista Road. Monument, CO 80132. His telephone and FAX number are both (719) 488-0721, and his e-mail address is: gilmoore12@aol.com.

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