Wow!
I gotta say: this is a great time to be a student and a high-school teacher, especially in Brookline, Massachusetts! When NASA wants to study meteor showers or other debris (like breaking-apart spacecraft) as they burst though our atmosphere, they call on a group of high-school students and their talented science teachers in Brookline. These are the folks at the Clay Center Observatory at Dexter and Southfield Schools. Even better, sometimes faculty members that guide the Clay Center students get to go out and track spacecraft with NASA folks in a high-flying aircraft.
The airborne expedition went to watch the Jules Verne passengerless craft that had been docked to the International Space Station reenter Earth’s atmosphere. To prepare for the study trip, NASA scientist Peter Jenniskens put together a group of 30 researchers at the space agency’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. After days of checks, calibrations, and test runs, the team, including Clay Center faculty members Ron Dantowitz and Marek Kozubal, along with undergraduate student David Sliski, climbed aboard two chase-plane aircraft to watch from high over the South Pacific during September 29th’s predawn encounter.
One one plane, Dantowitz and Kozubal operated a bank of eight sensitive cameras and spectrographs, built at the school, to record the temperature and composition of superheated fragments created during the spacecraft’s blazing atmospheric plunge. Meanwhile, Sliski operated an additional camera and spectrograph on a second aircraft, a DC-8 that NASA has converted into an airborne laboratory.
Once back in Massachusetts, Dantowitz and Kozubal will need many months to analyze their data. “The work of the Clay Center is often exciting, but the impact of this mission makes it truly extraordinary and very rewarding,” Dantowitz notes, adding that Dexter-Southfield students will be able to use the instruments and the accumulated data for research projects to enhance their science education.
Operated by Dexter and Southfield Schools, the Clay Center for Science and Technology is a state-of-the-art astronomical observatory and learning center. By day, the observatory provides students with opportunities to enrich their education through hands-on experiences in astronomy and science. At night, its professional-grade telescopes are used for scientific research and serve as a valuable resource for astronomers around the world.