Shamus Ian Fatzinger/ Fairfax County Times
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology students (from left) Brett Offutt, and Nicholas Allegro, both 18, pose with a working model of their student-designed and constructed satellite.
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Thomas Jefferson students win space race
Six-year project should result in 2012 satellite launch from Cape Caneveral
Students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology are about to go where none of their peers have gone before.
After six years of work by about 50 students, T.J. soon will become the first high school to develop and launch a satellite.
“The goal of this project is basically to bring an aerospace program down to the high school level,” said senior Brett Offutt, 18, one of two students working on the satellite as part of a research project this year.
“It’s a lot easier to start things when you have a model to base off of,” said fellow senior and satellite engineer Nicholas Allegro, 18. Students say they hope their work serves as a user-friendly guide for other high schools to launch their own satellite programs.
“This could be one of those things where people look at this school and say ‘T.J. is the high school that put the first [high school developed] satellite into space,’” Offutt said.
Some might say nothing less is expected of T.J. students. The high school has been named the top high school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report since the publication began its rankings in 2007.
Students attending the school come from Northern Virginia localities and must complete a rigorous admissions process — which includes an entrance exam, letters of recommendation and transcripts — usually during their eighth-grade year.
The project drew attention from President Barack Obama during his visit to the school Sept. 16, at which time he signed the American Invents Act, a patent reform law he said would help businesses bring new products into the market sooner.
Allegro and Offutt presented their plans to the president, who told them he was proud of their project and to keep up the good work.
“The satellite project illustrates how T.J. defines curriculum not only by what students should learn, but also how curriculum can be stretched through student exploration,” Principal Evan Glazer said. “This project was student-initiated, student-led and student-constructed. Our future is in good hands.”
The students have built a 10 centimeter cube satellite that weighs less than 1.2 kilograms. When launched, the satellite will rise about 320 kilometers above Earth and stay there for about a month. Currently, the satellite is undergoing testing at the Orbital Sciences Corporation facility in Dulles. A model of the satellite is at the high school for students to tinker with.
“We have sensors on the satellite that collect voltage, current and temperature data,” Allegro said, adding the data basically will gauge how the satellite is holding up in space and what its surroundings are like. “We’re starting to move further ahead toward launching and that means getting an environmental impact study done — lots of red tape.”
Students are on deadline to have the satellite’s design reviewed by Orbital staff Dec. 21. The launch is planned for the first half of 2012 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. A firm launch date has not been set.
Orbital Senior Principal Engineer Carlos Niederstrasser said he is impressed by the work T.J. students have accomplished.
“It’s already been a success even without launching a satellite,” he said. “The No. 1 goal is the student experience. … The lessons you learn by working on a hands-on project [like this] rather than what you’d learn in the class … you’d never learn this in class.
“The help we give them is mostly mentoring and advice. … There’s a review team composed mostly by Orbital folks who tell them what works and what needs more work.”
Niederstrasser said Orbital offers to help and fund programs such as this one as a means to spark the interest of young people in future careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Although Orbital has partnered with universities for similar projects, T.J. is the first high school it has worked with on a project this scale.
“We learned a lot of lessons this time around,” Niederstrasser said. “It took longer than expected.”
The project, he said, took longer in part because high school students do not have access to the same resources and labor hours that university students in engineering programs do.
Plans to develop and launch a student satellite also took longer than planned because of changes in course offerings at the high school.
The satellite project started during the 2006-07 school year as part of a new systems engineering course at the high school by teacher Adam Kemp. Building a satellite was to be the main long-term project for the course, Kemp said. The school received a $30,000 grant from Orbital Sciences Corporation, which previously had paired with university-level satellite projects.
“The objective was three years,” Kemp said of the deadline to build and launch a satellite. “That changed dramatically after the class was cancelled” because of budget cuts in 2009.
Instead, the project has been facilitated through students’ senior projects and a student organization called the T.J. 33 Sat Team.
“It’s been a challenge … but the students’ work on this has been astounding,” Kemp said. The satellite is expected to travel as part of a mission to resupply the International Space Station.
“We just get dropped off on the way,” Kemp said.
Alishan Hassan, who graduated from T.J. in June, said he has been keeping up with how the project is coming along.
“When I left off we were working on finishing the [communications] software for the satellite …and the operational software,” he said. “It was basically the most significant thing I did in high school. … It’s been a great experience that allowed me to use what I already knew about aerospace and learn more about it.
“Pretty much all of us who have worked on it in the last six years are going to show up to launch it.”
Those still working on the project also said it has left a lasting mark on them.
“I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, but this has opened my eyes to what’s possible in engineering,” Offutt said. “I think more schools should provide classes where there is more creativity involved [in the sciences].”
Allegro said he knows he is going to be an astronaut.
“I want to go into space,” he said, but for now his goal is to finish the satellite. “I want to see it launch while I’m still in school; I want to see it while I’m still the head of it.”
hhobbs@fairfaxtimes.com