It's Friday afternoon and most students are out waiting for homecoming weekend to begin. Sophomore mechanical engineering major Kevin Perkins, on the other hand, is having his fun in the new laboratory of the University of New Hampshire's Space Science Center.
On the ground floor of Morse Hall, he's working closely with research project engineer Stan Ellis. They're shuffling back and forth between the machinery and their worktable, both wearing blue jeans and T-shirts.
However casual the atmosphere may seem, Perkins isn't merely asking Ellis for help with his homework. The two are collaborating on a mission for NASA, which has given UNH a $61 million contribution to design, build, and launch four small satellites by the year 2014.
With this money, UNH opened this laboratory last Thursday in a small dedication ceremony that took place on the second floor of Morse Hall.
The new laboratory will be used by UNH space scientists, engineers, technicians, graduates and undergraduates to work on NASA's Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission. It includes a thermal-vacuum chamber, which will allow builders to test the satellites in a space-like environment.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin sent the message NASA had plans to go ahead with the mission, which involves 12 different institutions, according to a press release by David Sims in UNH Media Relations.
The team includes NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Southwest Research Institute, Johns Hopkins University of Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Colorado, as well as international partners in Austria, Sweden, France, and Japan.
Representatives from the Sensor System Line of Business of BAE systems in Nashua also attended the dedication ceremony. They plan on using the laboratory for their own ventures. BAE is a private, global company that provides development, delivery, and support of advanced defense in over 100 hundred different nations, according to their website.
Joe Klewicki, UNH dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said they are the leading employer in the state and hire a number of UNH students from the math and science departments each year.
UNH has a close partnership with BAE, which funds a Space Systems Fellowship program for students and gave the university a $1 million investment for the development of Kingsbury Hall.
"I'd say we're one of the top 10 universities in the nation to deal with NASA projects because we have the expertise and faculty to do so here at UNH," remarked Roy Torbert, interim director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) at UNH and the school's principle investigator for this NASA mission.
In addition to building and managing satellites, UNH is studying the little-known magnetosphere, the magnetic field that shields the Earth from solar radiation. By discovering more about the magnetosphere scientists can better predict space weather, which often interferes with the government's communication systems and challenges observing systems.
Torbert explained these satellites might be used to observe changes on Earth like happenings in the ocean or shifts in vegetation that will be useful information for creating solutions for global climatic change.
"What they are going to use them for is on strictly need-to-know basis," said Ellis. "We don't know."
UNH's role in this mission has already brought opportunities to students. Torbert said there are already 33 graduates and about 30 to 40 undergraduates currently working on the MMS mission. This new state-of-the-art laboratory is expected to help UNH become more competitive in receiving grants for research.
Klewicki pointed out other undergraduates rarely have the same opportunities to work on real research as they do at UNH. Work on research gets recognition on a national scale for the university and the students, thus creating job opportunities for them.
"Teaching at UNH is so ingrained that researchers still view research as a means to teach to their students," said Klewicki as he explained the advantage of getting an education at a research institution where both instruction and experience are involved in creating an education.
UNH currently has a hand in about 10 NASA missions and has a history of building satellites for missions dating back all the way to the 1950s.
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