Everyone has done experiments in high school laboratories, but have you ever thought about designing a satellite to explore space?
On Nov. 19, a team of students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the US awed peers and even scientists by successfully launching a satellite.
The first satellite designed and built by high school students was sent up into space along with a record-setting. 28 other small ones on a rocket were sent from a NASA center in Virginia, CNN reported. It took the students seven years to build.
The students call their tiny satellite TJ3Sat, which is named after their school. It is just 10x10x12 centimeters and weighs only 0.89 kilograms, according to Orbital Sciences, a company which developed the rocket and supported the students’ project. It can be controlled with a smartphone.
Like most satellites, TJ3Sat can send and receive data. The small spacecraft is equipped with a voice synthesizer (合成器), which can switch text to voice and transmit those sounds back to Earth over radio waves, said Orbital officials. In this case, anyone can give it a try via the project’s website (school website) by submitting (提交) a text. The texts that get approved will be sent to the satellite, changed to voice and then broadcast back to Earth via radio waves.
“I can say ‘Go Colonials’ on our ground station and when it is on the other side of the world, in India, someone can hear ‘Go Colonials’over the radio,” the team explains on the website.
The satellite will stay in space for at least three months.
School principal Evan Glazer told The Washington Post that the project started in 2006 as an activity in the spare time. Later it became a research project for a select group of seniors.
At a time when American students are busy with SATs, the launch of the satellite shows what dit agers can achieve when allowed to pursue their own curiosities, Glazer said.
“It used to be that kids growing up wanted to be an astronaut,” Andrew Petro, program executive (主管) for small spacecraft technology at NASA, said in a statement. “I think we might be seeing kids saying what they want to do is build a spacecraft. The idea here is that they really can do that.”
小题1: The underlined word “awed” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ___.A．influencedB．amazedC．delightedD．inspired小题2: Which of the following statements about TJ3Sat is TRUE according to the article?A．It took a group of students about a decade to build the satellite.B．Besides TJ3Sat, 28 other small satellites were built by the students.C．TJ3Sat can receive text messages that the students send into space, which it can change to voice messages and broadcast back to Earth.D．TJ3Sat is expected to stay in orbit for the next year, sending out messages together with information about its position in space.小题3: According to the article, the launch of the satellite _______.A．is evidence of the advance of spacecraft technologyB．proves that hard-working agers can achieve a lotC．shows the importance of extracurricular activities at schoolD．has inspired many people to take an interest in space travel