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Medford to Jupiter, via California Computer link lets students run 34-meter radiotelescope in desert By VICKI GUARINO Just a few clicks of the mouse and distances disappear. Gone are the hundreds of miles between St. Mary's School library and a NASA radio telescope in the high desert of Southern California. Gone, too, are the millions of miles between the library and the murky surface of Jupiter. "You guys ready to go to Jupiter?" St. Mary's freshman Mandy O'Gara asks classmates, relaying questions and directions by phone from education coordinators in Apple Valley, Calif. Moments later, they're there, reading numbers off the Internet -- coded radio signals indicating the temperatures on and around Jupiter. "338, 166, 136, 134 ... oh gosh ... 766, 784, 760, 812 ... oh no ... 112, 114, 146, 120... OK ... 122, 106, 142," sixth-grader Christina Thompson says as she struggles to keep up with the stream of numbers coming across the computer screen. She wasn't prepared for the data to come so fast. "This isn't something you can practice in advance," says teacher Holly Bensel, presiding over the session. More students cluster around the computer, writing down the numbers. Later, they'll transpose the coded signals into temperatures. No time for those calculations now, however. For a scant two hours, these student are busy running the 34-meter radio telescope at the federal Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, Fort Irwin, Calif. The St. Mary's students are part of Jupiter Quest, a nationwide exploration coordinated by a Southern California school district, working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make one of the NASA Deep Space telescopes work for kids. Nearly 30 middle and high schools around the country are participating in the quest, which is one of several space projects offered through Apple Valley (Calif.) school's Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope program. The mission to the Jovian System is planned by students. They use a Goldstone telescope to measure the temperature of Jupiter's atmosphere and study variations in the radio emissions from Jupiter's intense radiation belts. Students on the Internet direct the telescope through tedious calibrations, coached by telephone link to Mission Control at the Apple Valley school district's Lewis Center for Educational Research. Mandy and other students take turns on the telephone, coordinating every move. "...Click on that and bring it forward," Mandy tells one student, then jokes, "don't break the antenna." This is real data, in real time, from a real telescope more typically directed by scientists -- not science students. Nearby, another computer screen set on the Apple Valley project's Web site ( www.avstc.org ) relays a live video image of the telescope as it scans the sky under students' command. "The other night while we were on, the camera broke," says Bensel. "We watched the guys run out and fix it. That was interesting." Students have learned that all sorts of things can go wrong in science exploration. One of the school's time slots on the telescope was usurped by NASA scientists trying to contact their missing Mars Polar Lander. Another night, students were mysteriously dumped off the Net. But after four sessions -- one on Monday afternoon and evening was the last -- about 100 of St. Mary's 300-plus students had managed to get good, usable data from the Deep Space telescope. Freshman Ariana Thompson was taken by the absolute reality of Jupiter Quest. "I'm surprised they have something like this," Ariana says. "We're discovering something for ourselves." St. Mary's is the only private school involved in the Goldstone Deep Space education project. The school signed on after a parent heard about the program. The school paid about $900 for training teachers Bensel and Jolanta Sokolowska and for the time and assistance on the telescope. The teachers say the project brings a reality to science lessons that reports, books and lectures can't come close to providing students. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA