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Cu Students Ready Satellites for 3-Day Space Odyssey

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 December 2004, 09:00 CST

University of Colorado undergraduates will control a pair of student-built satellites this weekend in a mission cut short by the loss of the space shuttle Columbia nearly two years ago.

The $200,000 Three-Corner Sat mission was supposed to have launched on a space shuttle last year for a six-month study of clouds, pollution plumes and dust storms.

But when NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded after the Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia accident, the student-built satellites lost their ticket to space.

Team members opted to hitch a ride aboard a Boeing Delta IV rocket set for launch from Florida at 12:30 p.m. MST Friday. But the switch from shuttle to rocket meant the six-month mission would be cut to two or three days, said Steve Wichman, student research coordinator at the NASA-funded Colorado Space Grant Consortium.

"We took the first launch we could get, and it happened to have only a three-day lifetime," Wichman said Monday.

"But if we waited for the shuttle to fly it, that might take years," he said. "And everybody who had worked on it might be gone or graduated by then."

The Three-Corner Sat mission is a joint effort of students - mainly undergraduates - at the University of Colorado, Arizona State University and New Mexico State University.

Source: Rocky Mountain News

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