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Chimacum Middle School in Space!
“A small, optically reflective spherical "STARSHINE"
spacecraft is being built by Utah technology students for deployment from
a Hitchhiker canister in a Space Shuttle orbiter into a highly inclined
low earth orbit in the spring of 1999. Nearly nine hundred mirrors are
being polished by students in grades four through twelve all over the
world for mounting on the surface of this spacecraft to reflect sunlight
to observers on Earth.” Taken from the Starshine Website,
http://www.azinet.com/starshine/
Two of Chimacum Middle School’s 1998-1999 6th grade science classes
(the class of 2005) participated in the Starshine Project number 2 (see
website for more details). We filled out an online form on Starshine’s
website and they mailed us a Project Starshine kit which included two
1-inch diameter aluminum mirrors, a glass backing plate, special grade
sand paper, diamond polishing compound, a liquid lubricant, an optical
flat to test our mirrors flatness and an empty, self-addressed box to
mail a perfectly polished mirror to the Utah students. A video showed
students how to polish their mirrors, step by step. Two teams of three
students each were chosen randomly from each of the two science classes
to actually do the polishing. Once done, the mirror that seemed the most
reflective out of the two was chosen to be mailed to the Starshine program.
Along with the mirror that we, representing Chimacum
Middle School, polished, a list of all the students’ names in both
the science classes was included in the self-addressed box that we sent
to Utah. Each student signed her or his name next to their printed name
on the list that accompanied our mirror. The Starshine people will be
making our signed list into a microdot that will be affixed to the back
of our mirror just as the other 874 mirrors from schools all over the
world. A copy of that list and the other mirror remain in Room 604 for
any who would like to come and see.
The Starshine Project mirrors will be placed on the satellite and set
into orbit for 6 months beginning May of 1999. A piece of Chimacum will
actually be in Space! Sixth graders are very excited as we patiently await
the lift-off date of our satellite. Utah students will update the website
so that we can see the data they collect from the satellite and if all
goes well, they will be sending 10 more such satellites into orbit to
do a study of the effects of sunspots on the Earth. One satellite a year
will be deployed for a total of 11, the number of years in a sunspot cycle.
Then, in 2000, 2000-2001 6th graders (the class of 2007),
also participated in Starshine's 3rd project (see
website for more details).
Click here to see the polishing!
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