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 WEARE, New Hampshire USA — Weare's student rocketry team has the NASA pedigree. Its science teacher, Mark Kibler, has been launching toy rockets since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. One student member, Matt Gonthier, is the grandson of an engineer who worked on Apollo 12, the second manned moon mission.
This month, the team will have its own NASA launch. The squad of nine students, made up mostly of freshmen at John Stark Regional High School, has constructed a 6-foot-tall rocket. The team will launch it (and a small robotic vehicle enclosed inside) a mile into the air April 28, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Wouldn't it be cool to build a real robot and launch it into the sky?" said Gonthier, a John Stark freshman. The Weare squad won the right to participate in NASA's Student Launch Initiative last year. It was 24th in a NASA egg-launching competition for middle and high school teams across the nation. In that contest, the team had to launch a rocket with an egg 850 feet into the sky for 45 seconds and have the egg come down without a crack. The team has five members from John Stark, plus one member each from Weare Middle School, Hollis-Brookline High School, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and Green Mountain Valley School in Vermont. Most were part of the rocketry team when they were students at Weare Middle School. NASA invited the top 25 teams to propose their own rocket project, which they would pay for with $2,500. NASA only requires that the team shoot its rocket a mile into the air. In past events, one team has sent crickets with the rockets into the air, to study the effects of altitude on chirping, much like the Soviets shot a dog into orbit in the Sputnik mission. The Weare team decided against using any lifeforms at all in its project. "Who wants to launch a rocket to kill a grasshopper?" Grossman said. The team has named the project its "Model Mission to Mars," after NASA's Mars Rover mission. As the rocket rises then falls in the sky, it should break into three pieces. A vehicle will slide out of one of the pieces and parachute to the ground, where it will begin rolling, like a mini Mars Rover. A device implanted in the rocket's cone should record the rocket's altitude, speed and flight time, and the humidity and air pressure. They've successfully launched two smaller models, so they have high hopes that the real thing will work. They started designing the rocket soon after their top 25 finish in the egg contest in May, said team leader and John Stark freshman Tyler Becker. For the team full of rocket experts, coming up with a basic design wasn't difficult. The team will use ammonium perchlorate as rocket fuel and electric charges from a small computer to help separate the rocket into three sections during the descent. The rover's parachute is tied to a switch that turns on the rover's wheels so that when the rover hits the ground, it starts to move. If it didn't, the parachute would smother it. But team members had to scrap some of their goals. They planned to equip the rover with an auger, or scoop, to collect ground samples, just as the Mars Rover did. But that required a rocket with a 6-inch diameter, a size that would have forced them to use a rocket made of an extremely light material, such as carbon fiber. They settled on using a 4-inch rocket made of Kraft phenolic, a slightly heavier but cheaper material. The extra money gave them room for error; if something broke, they'd be able to replace it. They also received help from local businesses; without charging the students or NASA, the Concord Collision Center painted the rocket silver, and Pento Motorsports in Allenstown added flames. Kibler, the team's adviser and a Weare Middle School teacher, tooled around with low-powered rockets when he was in middle and high school himself. His award-winning robotics team has represented the United States in competitions in Denmark. The students have taken up his passion for building things. "I think it's made them realize they're more capable than what they've ever thought, whether rockets robots or performing arts," Kibler said. Becker, who said he also likes playing basketball, said he and team members spent their summer and weekends working on the project. "I'd been interested in science my whole life," Becker said. "That and mathematics. Then I ran into Mr. Kibler." The team has been meeting for about 10 hours each week after school hours, in addition to the individual time it put into the design, Becker said. Gonthier's grandfather was an engineer for Apollo 12's guidance system. (Unlike Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 mission, Apollo 12 landed on its targeted location.) Gonthier, who's thinking of becoming an engineer himself, said that he, too, loves the nuts and bolts. "In art class in middle school one time, I touched the drills and electronic chisel when I wasn't supposed to," he said. "I just want to see how it works." Copyright © 2007, Concord Monitor. |
