Terri Sindelar
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
(Phone:  202/453-8400)                       September 23, 
1992

Keith Koehler
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
(Phone:  804/824-1579)

Linda Wenners
Virginia Space Grant Consortium, Hampton, Va.
(Phone:  804/865-0726)


RELEASE:  92-156

STUDENT PAYLOAD SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED ON NASA ROCKET

     The first student managed and built payload flown on a 
NASA sounding rocket was launched successfully Monday, Sept. 
21, from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight 
Facility, Wallops Island, Va.

     The pilot project, known as the Colorado Student Ozone 
Atmospheric Rocket (CSOAR), was developed to demonstrate the 
use of sounding rocket flight as a valuable educational tool 
for undergraduate and graduate students.

     "This is like winning the Super Bowl the first time you 
try," said Elaine Hansen, Director of the Colorado Space Grant 
Consortium. 

     "It was amazing, beyond words," exclaimed Greg Essmeier, 
a student from Colorado State University at Fort Collins.

     The payload, designed to measure ozone density in the 
atmosphere, was carried aloft by a NASA single stage Orion 
sounding rocket at 2:32 p.m. EDT.  After reaching a 33.5 mile 
(53.9 kilometer) altitude in 116 seconds, the payload 
descended by parachute into the Atlantic Ocean where it was 
recovered by the U. S. Coast Guard from Chincoteague, Va.

     The project was a joint venture between NASA and the 
Space Grant Consortiums in Colorado and Virginia.

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     "This mission was conducted in a very professional manner 
and will serve as a model for future projects of this type," 
according to Joseph McGoogan, Director of Suborbital Projects 
and Operations at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

     "It was a real team effort.  It wasn't just one person 
doing it," said Dan Shrosphire, a graduate student from the 
University of Colorado at Boulder, referring to the students 
working at seven different sites during the launch. 

     More than 50 students from six participating Colorado 
colleges and universities developed the CSOAR payload during 
the past 2 years.  Virginia students provided public affairs 
support and also will provide post-flight data comparison.

     The data will be analyzed and compared with data gathered 
by NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Satellite.  Results are 
expected in about 2 months.

     The CSOAR launch is supported by the overall NASA 
Sounding Rocket program, managed at Wallops for NASA's Office 
of Space Science and Applications, Washington, D.C.  The NASA 
program consists of approximately 30 sounding rockets launched 
each year from various worldwide locations.

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