THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 10, 1994 TAG: 9409100230
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
They stayed late, after the school halls emptied, after their classmates had gone home to prop themselves in front of a TV or to hang out at the mall. They stayed later, sometimes leaving after midnight. They stayed longer, working on weekends and holidays.
They scrimped, organized fund-raisers, got their folks to help out every now and again. Local businesses donated equipment and money.
Always they were planning, tinkering, improving. They went down blind alleys, reversed course, threw out original designs, started over.
Always in the back of their minds there was this thought: This is ours. We did this. This thing is going to fly.
So when the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center late Friday afternoon with their experiment tucked securely away in the cargo bay, the students from the Norfolk Public Schools Science and Technology Advanced Research team (NORSTAR) knew they had achieved something they would remember for the rest of their lives.
``It's wrapping up everything I've been doing for the last three years,'' said 17-year-old Maury High School junior Summer Graves, NORSTAR payload systems coordinator.
``It's the culmination, the peak. Everybody's pretty excited. Everything's on a high right now.''
A dozen NORSTAR students accompanied supervising teacher Joy Young to watch the thunderstorm-delayed 6:23 p.m. Discovery launch from a viewing area at Kennedy.
Aboard Discovery is an instruments package designed by NORSTAR students that will visually record sound wave patterns in the nearly weightless conditions of space. Results from the experiment could lead to more efficient car engines, quieter air conditioners, better sound-deadening in auditoriums and improved car mufflers.
The shuttle's primary payload was devised at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. Called LITE, for Lidar In-Space Technology Experiment, the Langley device will use lasers to study clouds and aerosols, minute particles suspended in Earth's atmosphere.
In fact, members of the NORSTAR team worked closely with adult advisers at Langley to make sure the NORSTAR sound-wave project would meet NASA's exacting in-space scientific and engineering criteria. Some of the early meetings were awkward, participants say, with the students a little intimidated and unwilling to assert themselves in front of their elders.
``Some were so shy they were afraid to talk in front of adult engineers,'' recalled Joseph S. Heyman, the NORSTAR science mentor and Langley's deputy director for technology applications. ``They were coming to a group of scientists at a major national laboratory. They were stretched. And they achieved.''
Ten years have passed since a $10,000 NASA grant seeded the NORSTAR project. Several generations of students, perhaps 100 in all and culled from different Norfolk high schools, have contributed time and talent as the project evolved.
In space, astronauts will turn the NORSTAR experiment on and off with a hand-held remote. Once the power starts flowing into the sealed canister that contains the student device, small tweeter speakers at the bottom of two clear plastic tubes will begin to produce sound waves.
In turn, the waves will send a palmful of cork dust swirling around in the tubes. Two hand-size camcorders will record the results. The entire array is powered by 14 6-volt batteries.
Piggybacked on the experiment are 90 small plastic vials supplied by Norfolk elementary and middle schoolers, from grades 2 through 7. The vials have been filled with such items as seeds, iron filings, ink and popcorn. The younger students will examine how microgravity affects the enclosed materials.
NORSTAR graduates have nothing but praise for a program they say motivated and inspired them as no other course offering ever had.
``For me the project was not so much about acoustics, modal patterns or standing sound waves,'' said Jeff Booth, the NORSTAR project's design engineer before his 1992 graduation from Granby High. ``For me it was working with others, dealing with bureaucracy and achieving a goal. It taught me how to actually do science - what it's really like to sit down and do something.''
Booth is now a physics major at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
NORSTAR supervising teacher Joy Young believes her pupils were so enthusiastic because they were given genuine ownership of a formidable challenge. Adults advised, but the students did the lion's share of the labor. Success wasn't guaranteed and, in the absence of initiative or stick-to-itiveness, failure would have been nearly certain.
That her charges were so fired up to succeed, Young says, suggests that some of the NORSTAR lessons can be applied throughout the school system.
``I wish this kind of teaching took place in every classroom. It's vital,'' Young said. ``These kids have learned everyday work skills, not just electronics. They've learned how to relate to people, where to get information, how to be persistent.
``The education became theirs. I guide it. They own it.''
Current plans call for the experiment to be shipped back to Norfolk from Florida about two weeks after the Discovery mission ends Sept. 18.
Then the current generation of NORSTAR students will discover what the heavens have revealed and what they will be able to pass on to the rest of us who remain earth-bound. MEMO: NORSTAR Science Crew
CHIEF ENGINEER: Jeremy Estes, 17, graduated from Granby High and has
enrolled at Old Dominion University to major in mechanical engineering.
Jeremy says he has ``been building stuff ever since I can remember.'' If
the NORSTAR experiment stays in one piece, he says, ``my job will have
been successful.''
PAYLOAD SYSTEMS COORDINATION: Summer Graves, 17, a junior at Maury
High. When Summer entered the NORSTAR program, she says, she barely knew
how to use a computer.
Seeing the payload ready to fly ``is really amazing. This is . . .
years of work.''
VIDEO AND AUDIO ANALYSIS: Lisa Krueger, 17, a senior at Granby. Lisa
remembers the financial problems, the lack of equipment, feeling
overwhelmed by the project's scope and detail. ``I had no idea it would
end up like this,'' she says. ``It feels so good.''
DOCUMENTS SPECIALIST: Maridel Mirador, 17, graduated from Lake Taylor
High and is attending Old Dominion University, with plans to major
either in medicine or engineering. She says the hardest thing was
dealing with the seemingly endless amount of paperwork. ``We've covered
things that might go wrong most of the time. We think,'' she says.
COMPUTER DRAFTING/DESIGN: Ricky Wallace, 16, a junior at Norview
High. This Portside concessions entrepreneur and light blue belt in tae
kwon do - he plans to try out for the '96 Olympics - says he was hanging
with the wrong crowd until NORSTAR came along. The day of the launch, he
said he was ``pumped up, for sure. I'm pretty sure it will work. I have
a lot of confidence in what we've done.'' by CNB