South Charleston High School – Near Space Satellite

The Miami Herald reports on the education work of radio amateurs Jeffrey Imel K9ESE and Joseph Oliver AA4KK. They are helping high school students to develop a balloon launched satellite.

Educators generally agree that hands-on activities are the best way to get kids interested in these disciplines, which are becoming increasingly important in the 21st century.

Tiffany Grigsby, an 11th-grader who is working on the satellites, is one of the students who needs no convincing. She wants to go into aerospace or aeronautical engineering in college and maybe work for NASA. For her, the satellite project is the ideal science project.

“I love outer space,” she said. “The unknown is so interesting. You don’t know a lot about it, and I’m here to learn … building a satellite is the perfect thing.”

Grigsby is a self-professed hands-on learner. She doubts she could learn how to build a satellite from a book, but she knows she’ll emerge from this class with those skills.

“And then it’s not just that you know what’s in there, it’s that you understand what’s in there.”

Read the full story at http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/23/3706377/south-charleston-high-students.html

The class is using crowd sourcing to raise money to purchase equipment for the project. To donate, visit http://indiegogo.com/projects/near-space-project

IARU Region 2 band plan recognizes Near Space Stations https://amsat-uk.org/2013/10/22/new-satellite-segment-in-iaru-region-2-bandplan/