3, 2, 1, ... BLAST OFF

6-22-2009

Tension and excitement pulsed through Mission Control at the Lewis Center for Educational Research in the minutes leading up to a NASA rocket launch Thursday. The event marked the first NASA lunar mission in a decade - and the first time students at the Lewis Center will play a pivotal role in tracking and monitoring a NASA spacecraft.

As several dozen students, educators and community members watched the launch on four large projector screens, a handful of students and Lewis Center President Rick Piercy witnessed the launch live from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Around 2:30 p.m. the Atlas V rocket carrying a pair of unmanned science probes blasted off, ducking through clouds and providing an exhilarating start to the $583 million mission.

The late afternoon launch made a thunderous noise and shook the ground as far as five miles from the launch pad, where about 2,000 people watched the event, said Alicia Scarberry, 18, an Academy for Academic Excellence graduate who witnessed the launch firsthand.

"There was noise, smoke, fire - it was marvelous, nothing can compare to it," Scarberry said. "There was a mass of people just crying with happiness." The mission, named the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, is to search for water on the moon, with the ultimate goal of setting up lunar outposts by 2020.

Live spectators exuded patriotism and reverence as the "Star-Spangled Banner" played right before lift-off, Piercy said.

Back in Apple Valley, the Lewis Center audience counted down from 10 seconds, all eyes focused on the live video feed. The audience erupted into cheers and applause as the slim spacecraft blasted straight into the sky, leaving behind a plume of fiery smoke and traveling about 2,400 miles per hour within seconds of take-off.

"It's kind of exciting to be here to see the blast off," said Geoff Golliher, a Level 3 computer programmer for the Lewis Center, who also teaches some computer science classes. He brought along his two boys, ages 8 and 6.

"The kids, they might remember this pretty historic moment," Golliher added. Lewis Center summer school students will be tracking the LCROSS mission daily, and more Academy for Academic Excellence students will participate when classes begin in the fall.

"Children need to be engaged in what they learn," Piercy said, "and when our students learn math and science in a way that they can understand and see the practical applications, then we'll start to fill the void in math, science and engineering."

Brian Day, Educator Resource Center manager at NASA Ames Research Center, said the partnership with the Lewis Center marks a "new paradigm for NASA education." "Instead of people just listening to us tell them what we're doing, they take on an active role in participatory exploration," Day said.

Day said the Lewis Center, the only K-12 public school in the nation with a fully functioning space radio-antenna, is "at the forefront of technology and at the forefront of educational methods," making the educational institution a "perfect pairing" with NASA Ames.

"I'm very much looking forward to monitoring it tomorrow," Lewis Center Manager of Global Operations Ryan Dorcey said Wednesday. "It's the first time that we'll be monitoring spacecraft, so this could open up all new venues for us."

The Lewis Center's Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope program, or GAVRT, is a collaboration with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Through classes and internships, students have previously participated in space exploration such as Jupiter Quest and Uranus Campaign.

Scarberry, who served as a GAVRT intern during high school, said the program offers so much motivation and practical connections for students. "Most kids never think they can be a scientist or work at NASA ..." Scarberry said. "It's just wonderful to realize they can be what they want to be."

Piercy said the Lewis Center is geared to handle more than 60 million students across the globe to participate in the LCROSS program online, including homeschoolers and adults who want to track the mission. All they have to do is visit LewisLearning.org.

The two spacecraft should reach the moon in four to five days - or by early next week. One will enter into an orbit around the moon for a mapping mission. The other will swing past the moon and go into an elongated orbit around Earth that will put it on course to crash into a crater at the moon's south pole in October.

Students will play an important role in monitoring the satellite during time periods when NASA Ames does not have access to the Deep Space Network, especially in the event that something goes wrong.

Each 72-hour period, NASA Ames will only be monitoring for about two hours, while Lewis Center staff and students monitor the other 70. "Now's the time where the rubber hits the road," Day said, "and students show us what they can do."

Used with permission by Daily Press, Freedom Communication, 2009