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We're running behind our originally planned schedule for shipping mirror-polishing kits. We apologize most sincerely for all the inconvenience this is causing. However, our friends at the Aerospace Development Center of Jacksonville State University now have their kit production line running full blast, so we hope you'll be receiving your kit within the next two or three weeks. They'll be shipping it to you by Domestic or International Priority Mail, depending on whether you live in the U.S.A. or another country. Please ship your polished mirror back to them by November 30, 2000, using the same, or equivalent, expedited method. Our Starshine team will then clean and inspect your mirror, coat it with silicon dioxide, mount it on the Starshine 2 satellite, shake test the satellite, install it in its Hitchhiker canister, mount the canister on a Hitchhiker pallet, install the pallet in the Space Shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay and launch it into space on October 4, 2001. We still have 250 mirror kits left, but the rate of application has recently increased significantly. So, if your school would like to sign up for the program, or you know of another school that might be interested, don't delay. Click here to bring up the STARSHINE SCHOOL PARTICIPATION FORM, fill it out and send it in as soon as possible. Don't use the Enter key to move from place to place in the form, or you'll send it in before you've finished it. Use your mouse, instead. Just to let you know how the Starshine 2 satellite is coming along, its structural design and new spin system will be subjected to a Critical Design Review at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC on October 4, 2000. That design will be then presented to NASA in a Technical Interchange Meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD on October 18, 2000. The meeting will be hosted by Dr. Ruthan Lewis, the mission manager for the MACH-1 (Multiple Application Customized Hitchhiker-1) pallet on which Starshine's canister will be mounted. The meeting will be attended by all the groups who will be flying experiments aboard that pallet on the STS-108 mission in October of 2001.
Gil Moore
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