NASA PREPARED TO DELIVER 1 MILLION SIGNATURES ABOARD ITS PLANETARY 1997

April 04, 1996
Philadelphia Inquirer

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.

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