From: | AOLNewsProfiles@aol.net |
Title: | NASA PREPARED TO DELIVER 1 MILLION SIGNATURES ABOARD ITS PLANETARY 1997 |
Source: | Philadelphia Inquirer |
Date: | April 04, 1996 |
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
Apr. 3--Tell 'em you're here: Want to send your signature to Saturn
next
year? The U.S. Postal Service will deliver it part way, then NASA takes over.
If you sign a postcard and send it to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in California, the space agency will send it 1.5 billion miles farther.
NASA will take as many as 1 million signatures to Saturn aboard its $2
billion Cassini planetary probe, scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral
Air Station in October, 1997. So far 50,000 autographs have come in.
In the past, NASA has sent a couple thousand signatures to other
planets, but this time Cassini can carry far more autographs because
volunteers will scan and load the signatures on a CD-ROM disc, said Charley
Kohlhase, Cassini's science and project engineering manager.
However, the six-ton Cassini won't be carrying CD reader, Kohlhase
said.
So any non-Earthling trying to read your name could be out of luck.
You have until Jan. 1, 1997 to get your signature on a plain postcard
and send it to: Suzanne Barber, MS 264-441, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800
Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, Calif. 91109.
The better to see you with: The idea came to 17-year-old Ian Hagemann
in
September, after a visit to his eye doctor. He had seen the machine his
doctor used to diagnose eye diseases and brain disorders, and he wondered why
it had to be so large, nearly the size of a telephone booth.
So the Fairfax County, Va., high school senior followed his instincts.
He invented his own machine. Using about $100 worth of computer chips,
speakers and other supplies, Hagemann designed and built a briefcase-sized
version of the $20,000-plus device, known as a visual field analyzer.
Ophthalmologists say the teenager's creation is more than a nifty
science project. If put into mass production, it would allow glaucoma testing
in places such as supermarkets, homes and public health clinics, doctors
said, making it easier to screen poor people, rural residents and elderly
shut-ins.
Hagemann, who attends Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and
Technology in Annandale and lives in Great Falls, has applied for a patent on
his invention. In the meantime, the portable device has earned him first
place in the National Science Teachers Association's annual Duracell/NSTA
Scholarship Competition. He will go to St. Louis this week to accept the
award, a $20,000 savings bond.