NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Today's students will be the future explorers of our solar system. Some of them, though, don't want to wait that long.

Image to right: Students were involved in the full development of the Student Dust Counter, from design to testing. Credit: LASP

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which launched earlier this year on a voyage to Pluto, includes in its scientific payload an instrument designed entirely by students at the University of Colorado. The Student Dust Counter will measure the quantity of tiny particles in our solar system, as the probe travels for nine years to reach Pluto and then journeys beyond into the Kuiper Belt.

NASA's New Horizons mission has been described as "the first mission to the last planet." Spacecraft have visited our solar system's four rocky inner worlds and the four gas giants that lie beyond the asteroid belt. But no probe has ever visited the icy world of Pluto. When it arrives in 2015, New Horizons will give us our first close-up look at Pluto, its moon Charon and two other newly discovered moons. The spacecraft will then travel farther from the sun for several years, studying the Kuiper Belt, an area beyond the orbit of Neptune populated by "ice dwarf" worlds.

Image to left: New Horizons will reach Pluto in 2015. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)

While the bulk of New Horizons' mission lies at the edge of the solar system, the Student Dust Counter begins work much closer to home. As New Horizons travels through the solar system, the SDC will monitor the presence of dust particles in order to study three things. First, it will map the density of dust particles throughout the solar system. Second, it will study the distribution of different sizes of particles. Third, it will attempt to determine how quickly the Kuiper Belt produces dust.

An 18-by-12-inch detector assembly is mounted on the outside of the spacecraft. This location exposes the detector to dust particles. When a particle hits the detector, it generates an electric signal that tells the instrument how large the particle was.

Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission, believed that a student-led instrument would be an excellent contribution to the spacecraft. The University of Colorado has a long history of involvement in space research, and the school's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has prior experience with student-designed instruments. Twenty students made up the LASP dust counter team, which designed the first interplanetary instrument created by students.

Image to right: Two more moons (the small points of light in the upper half of the image) have recently been discovered near Pluto (center) and its moon Charon (near Pluto). Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team

David James was in his second year of graduate school when he started working on SDC in detector testing and then data analysis. He said that being part of that group was one of the most rewarding parts of the experience. "Honestly, I'm most proud of the team," he said. "It was one of the most hard-working, intelligent and friendly groups of people I have ever known, ... from students to staff to professionals."

Chelsey Bryant, the lead for the detector design and testing subsystem, said that she basically ended up participating in the program by chance. As a new student at the University of Colorado, she was looking for a position as a teaching assistant, and had heard that LASP hired students. "It was really luck from there," she said. "I happened to meet (LASP's Engineering Director) Mike McGrath, who eventually hired me to work on SDC. At the time, I was upset that I hadn't been able to get a TA position like a lot of the new graduate students, but, wow, I am glad it worked out the way it did." Bryant's team designed and built the prototype detectors for the instrument, and then, based on tests of those prototypes, chose the final flight design.

Related Resources + NASA New Horizons Mission Page + New Horizons + New Horizons Student Dust Counter

One of Stern's goals for having a student-designed instrument on the spacecraft was to contribute to the development of tomorrow's engineers and scientists. The project was a great success in that respect, according to its participants.

"Probably the most beneficial part of the project for me was the real-world experience that I gained," said James. He tested the dust detectors by using a pulsed laser to simulate dust impacts and has also worked on calibrating the instrument. "Unexpected problems came up that had to be dealt with and we all knew that a lot was riding on us finding a solution. The professionals on the project, really to their credit, had a lot of confidence in the students, and because of this we were able to come out of it with a great sense of accomplishment while gaining a tremendous amount of hands-on experience."

Image to left: New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched when it took off on an Atlas V rocket Jan. 19, 2006. Credit: NASA

Matt Colgan, one of team's software engineers, said that among the benefits of the project was a unique opportunity to follow the instrument through its development. "SDC taught me the spacecraft life cycle from 'cradle to grave' (or at least from cradle to the prepubescent years, since New Horizons has many more years to go)," he said. "I was able to apply much of what I had learned in my computer science courses. It was nice to have the reassurance that my classes were actually useful in the 'real world.' I also learned how to work with several managers at once, since we had student project managers as well as professional mentors who served as technical managers."

Colgan along with another student, Beth Grogan, designed, wrote and tested the onboard software for the SDC, which allows the instrument to respond to commands from mission operators. The software also manages the data in the instrument's memory and transfers it to the spacecraft main computer to be sent to Earth.

Team member Otto Krauss was the integration and test lead and was involved in mechanical design. He agreed with Colgan about the benefits of being able to follow the different stages of the project. "I was exposed to most of the engineering lifecycle of parts I designed, and that is very satisfying," he said. "I got spoiled in that sense, since I don't get to do that at my current job." He added, "I'm proud of the fact that the instrument got shipped to the Applied Physics Lab having survived all kinds of testing and it was still working."

Bryant agreed that the project was an amazing learning opportunity. "I don't think you can learn in a classroom, what we learned working on SDC," she said. "The hands-on experience working on a space instrument took it to an entirely new level for me. It definitely made me much more interested in spacecraft design, and it helped all of us to understand why you have to build things certain ways and the materials you have to use and all those details that you wouldn't necessarily grasp sitting in a classroom. My experience on the project helped me also to get a job after I graduated: I am now working on the calibration team at LASP. We are the group responsible for calibrating all of the space instruments built here in-house."

Image to right: The SDC's dust detector is mounted on the outside of the New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/LASP

The SDC project helped prepare both the New Horizons spacecraft and the student team for the long journeys that lie ahead of them. In nine years, New Horizons -- and its Student Dust Counter -- will be reaching Pluto. Where will the instrument's designers be then?

Bryant looks forward to finding out: "I'm sure I'll still be working in the space field," she said. "I hope to get into more of the design aspect of instruments and spacecrafts. I'm sure all of us will have families by then, which will be fun to see when we have a big reunion when we get there."

"I hope to graduate with my Ph.D in another 4 to 5 years, so hopefully by then I will be working at NASA, designing autonomous guidance and control flight software," Colgan said.

James said he imagines that when New Horizons reaches Pluto, he'll be "probably opening a bottle of champagne."

"Other than that I don't know," he said. "Hopefully by then I'll have my Ph.D. If not, then I probably won't be able to afford the champagne. I could see myself working at a place like LASP. The whole experience has been wonderful and hopefully I'll find a place that offers a similar environment in which to work."

David Hitt/NASA Educational Technology Services