Most students at Hohenfels High School in Germany are from U.S. military
families posted overseas. Sometimes America can seem far away.

This month, the 11th and 12th graders in Joyce Dusenberry’s astronomy class
at the school made that distance shrink. From their classroom computer, they
pointed a large telescope in California to study a place that’s really far
away: Jupiter.

“Every student in the class gave commands to the computer to control the
telescope,” Dusenberry said. “I saw excitement in the eyes of some students
who had given up on science because they thought it was too hard or too
boring. Being allowed to operate the telescope piqued their interest and
hopefully reopened their minds to the joy of learning science.”

With that online observing session, the students also became the first
overseas participants in a five-year-old research and education partnership
that has already enriched learning opportunities for more than 10,000
students in schools throughout the United States. The students and their
teachers collaborate with scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and with education experts at the Lewis Center for
Educational Research, Apple Valley, Calif., to use a big-dish radio
telescope that’s out in the desert near Barstow, Calif.

Students at four other schools serving U.S. military families stationed at
overseas bases will also use the radio telescope in coming weeks — two
schools in Japan, one in South Korea and a second in Germany. Jim Roller,
Lewis Center vice president for science and technology, said “We’ve been
saying all along we could offer this program anywhere in the United States.
Now it’s worldwide!”

The telescope is one of several large parabolic antennas at the Goldstone
complex of the worldwide Deep Space Network that JPL manages for NASA. It
spans 34 meters (112 feet) from rim to rim and stands nine stories tall.
NASA used it for years as a communications antenna supporting solar-system
exploration missions such as the Mariners, Voyagers and Galileo. When newer
communications antennas replaced it in that role, this big dish became the
centerpiece of the Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope Project.

Students from upper elementary grades through high school use the telescope
as part of a thoroughly planned curriculum aligned with state and national
education standards. They interact with NASA researchers and analyze their
observations for real scientific investigations. Their teachers complete a
week of Lewis Center training in advance to learn the fundamentals of radio
astronomy and prepare for using the project to strengthen lessons in
teamwork and problem-solving.

At Hohenfels on Dec. 5, astronomy student Gabriel Valenzuela and his
classmates linked by telephone and computer with specialists in the
telescope’s mission-control room at the Lewis Center. The time-zone
difference made it 4:30 in the morning in California when it was 1:30 in the
afternoon in Germany. The students got the dish pointed right at Jupiter,
which was high in the sky over Goldstone at that hour. They collected
information about the intensity of radio-frequency emissions coming from the
powerful radiation belts encircling the planet.

“The results of their observations will be added to our research,” said Dr.
Michael Klein, manager of the Deep Space Network’s science office. “The
students are truly part of our science team.” Jupiter’s radio emissions vary
from hour to hour and day to day. The steadily growing database from student
observations over the span of months and years is important for interpreting
how the large magnetic environment around Jupiter behaves, Klein said. It
provides context for shorter periods of time when spacecraft, such as
Galileo, can study specific regions of the radiation belts in greater
detail.

Dusenberry praised the program’s benefits for her students: “It gives them
the opportunity to use some very sophisticated equipment to collect data
that is not only used by them, but also becomes part of a data bank for
scientists working all over the world. It gives them a feel for what real
scientists actually do.”

For more information about the Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope
Project, see http://www.gavrt.org.