Sky no limit at new tech center
By CHUCK MUELLER/Staff WriterAPPLE VALLEY — A unique window to the universe opened Thursday for thousands of students via an Internet link to a giant NASA radio telescope, as a $4.5million technology center was dedicated at the Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley.
While visitors toured the 32,000-square-foot building in the Mojave River lowlands, students there tracked a galaxy millions of light-years away through a 111-foot-wide dish antenna at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Tracking Complex near Barstow.
"We're controlling a million-pound elephant with a mouse," said telescope operator Serena Fields-Villareal.
The center houses the Academy for Academic Excellence charter school. The two-story technology center was funded through a state grant approved by Gov. Gray Davis, to whom it was dedicated "for his leadership and vision for the children of California."
"The center's educational partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the Defense Department and the Apple Valley Unified School District has opened a new spectrum for student research through radio astronomy."
"Our focus is inquiry-based, providing hands-on education that allows our students to use the Internet and scientific equipment ... to study the sky at wavelengths far beyond the limits of the human eye," said Rick Piercy, the Lewis Center's chief executive officer."A lot of kids with great ability in science have little chance to use their hands-on skills," he said, "so we're developing paths for schools to integrate these skills into regular classroom programs. "
Michael Klein, manager of JPL's space network science office, said the Lewis Center gives young people an opportunity to get involved in "real science and discovery." Nearly 8,000 students from 53 schools in 16 states are taking part in the Lewis Center's Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope program.
"It's designed to bring the universe to America's classrooms," Piercy said.On Thursday, students from Orting Middle School in Orting, Wash., controlled the Goldstone telescope to study electromagnetic radiation from Jupiter.
"They are measuring the temperature of Jupiter's atmosphere and variations in radio emissions from the planet's radiation belts," said Robert McLeod, the center's director of global operations.
Data gathered by the students will be analyzed by JPL scientists for use in future space missions to Jupiter and its moons. The academy, which has two campuses in Apple Valley, provides a home-school based curriculum for kindergarten to 12th-grade students. About 450 students are enrolled at the Mojave River campus in grades seven through 12, and 300 others attend elementary school at the campus on Thunderbird Road.
Used with permission by The Sun, 2001