Students from Wendover High School, in Wendover, will participate in the launch of a suborbital rocket June 7 at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
More than 35 students and teachers from across the country will converge on Wallops June 5-8 for Flight Week.
During Flight Week, students will get a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for a NASA rocket mission and will participate in the final reviews to clear the rocket and experiments for launch. Fourteen experiments from 13 schools and organizations will fly on the Orion rocket.
In addition, the students will participate in workshops on rocketry and Range Control Center operations, and tour the rocket, scientific balloon and aircraft facilities.
In its ninth year, this program provides students the unique opportunity to participate in all aspects of a science mission. Five of the experiments will fly in the main body of the rocket’s payload section, called the Suborbital Student Experiment Module, while the other nine will be placed in the nosecone.
Scheduled for launch between 6 and 8 a.m., EDT, the 20-foot rocket is expected to carry the experiments more than 25 miles above the Earth. After descending by parachute and landing in the Atlantic Ocean, the experiments will be recovered and returned to the students later in the day. The students will examine and analyze their experiment data and present their preliminary findings to NASA personnel the following day.
Wireless communications, magnetic fields, fluids and payload temperatures during flight are the focus of the main payload experiments. Students also will study the effects of the flight environment, such as radiation and high gravitational forces, on a variety of materials placed in the nosecone and the payload section.
For further information about NASA education programs on the Internet, visit: http://education.nasa.gov/home/index.htm
