Illustrious SEDS Projects
SEDS accomplished much in the previous year. We want to continue in full stride this year. We have a number of current projects to maintain, and also some new, interesting projects this year. As always, we would appreciate your help and suggestions!
Our meetings will be at a NEW time and in a NEW place this year. Meetings will be held at 7:00 pm in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building room 312. The Space Sciences Building is directly east of Flandrau Planetarium. Feel free to drop by the SEDS office, which will usually be occupied on weekday afternoons.
SEDS Internet Space Archive
Maintaining the SEDS.LPL.Arizona.EDU internet site is a continuous and ever-expanding project. We received a $42,000 grant from SUN microsystems this summer and as a result have a brand new multiprocessor graphics workstation to help our Internet efforts. If you are interested in helping maintaining and developing our gopher, ftp, ftpmail, and World Wide Web sites, we would greatly appreciate your help. No experience is necessary, and we will gladly guide you up the learning curve of system administration. Some ideas being discussed are a hypertext guide to Messier objects or a hypertext illustration of star formation. If you want to be the one to put something like this together (and it is simple using Mosaic) we'd be more than happy to show you how.
SEDSAT Groundstation
Building a "model groundstation" for the University of Alabama at Huntsville SEDS' "SEDSat" amateur satellite... This is a small ham radio satellite that will be in orbit in 1997 and will present a huge opportunity for students everywhere to participate in satellite communications. Several experiments will be aboard as well as standard "OSCAR" ham radio interfaces. This project is at the beginning stages, so now is an excellent time to jump on board.
High Powered Rocket
Designing, Constructing and Flying a High Powered rocket as well as instrumentation to be flown on it.... Although much design has already been done, we need plenty of help to make the rest of this project happen. We are currently in the midst of various legal issues associated with this project, but hope to be done with that before too long.
Orbital Mechanics Program
Orbital Mechanics programming project... SEDS has been working for some time on an orbital mechanics program (written in C) that has the features that we would like to see in other programs. We are especially in need of a DOS graphics expert at the moment. As usual, all skill levels are welcome, and we will give you the training you need (learn C for free!)
Ascending Node BBS
The "Ascending Node" Space Exploration BBS (621-3769). This BBS is always developing, and new ideas and workers are always appreciated.
Other Illustrious Projects...
SEDS' Newsletter
The "Ascending Node Newsletter" is SEDS monthly newsletter informing the U of A community of various space-related news and information. The next issue will be out in early October, and writers are short supply - if you have a knack for composition, we'd like to meet you. The editor is (once again) Guy "Smiley" McArthur. Submissions may be left in the SEDS mailbox in the Space Sciences Building or e-mailed to
smiley@seds.lpl.arizona.edu
Planetarium Exhibit
SEDS lovingly maintains an exhibit in Flandrau Planetarium. This exhibit continues to toward the direction of completion, but because of it's "up to date" nature, it never will. New ideas for exhibit features and innovations are always appreciated, and we need to train future "caretakers" so that the exhibit may continue in the future.
