Weber State College Comment, April 1986, page 6 Innovation NUSAT project big success round controllers have activated the only part of the Northern Utah Satellite (NUSAT) project that had not yet been tried in space. The satellite’s L-band receiver was turned on for the first time on Jan. 25 to see if it could pick up signals from radar dishes used by the Federal Aviation Administration and ground controllers at the college were pleasantly surprised. “Immediately it picked up 20 sets of pulses,” said Bill Clapp, assistant pro- fessor of electronics and faculty advisors for one of the NUSAT. “This is the first indication we have had that it is working,” Clapp said. The satellite was launched by the college April 29 from the Space Shuttle Challenger and has been completing one orbit around the earth every 90 minutes since then. The satellite is the first college-built device of its kind and officials in the ground control station had difficulty at first getting the machine to function properly. They lost complete contact from July 15 to Nov. 23, but since that time have corrected the problems that have limited the satellite’s performance. The satellite’s reliability is very high right now, Clapp said. “We can get reliable information from it very quickly now,” he said. The satellite is designed to gather information on radar which helps the FAA fine tune the system they use to The NUSAT project is successfully and reliably functioning as a tool for the Federal Aviation Administration to fine tune the radar system they use for air traffic control. monitor air traffic. Additionally, the college is going after a NASA grant that would provide $1 million a year for five years for space research. Twiggs said they have a much better chance of getting that funding if there are a number of colleges and businesses involved in a con- Not content to contact NUSAT | from their ground station at the college, NUSAT engineers took their act on the road in March and contacted the satellite using a ham radio operator in Montana. “It works even in Montana,” said sortium arrangement. Robert Twiggs, an associate professor of electronics and a faculty advisor to the space project. ‘We're looking for Montana State to do research on attitude control and booster systems,” Twiggs said. “They have the graduate students to do that.” The Montana school seemed _interested, especially after Twiggs used Gene Shea’s ham radio antenna to get 74 sets of information from the satellite The trip to Montana was made to show people at Montana State University the NUSAT concept in hopes they might join a proposed further space research. consortium to received $125,000 from the state to establish a Center for Excellence, and that money is making it possible to contact a number of universities and businesses in an effort to build research of programming partnerships. signals in a swath that stretches from Greenland to just north of the South the the Space Shuttle Challenger April 29 of as it floated somewhere above the last year and has completed nearly all _ of its mission. Pacific Ocean. It has successfully picked up radar. He said, “We proved we were real in signals from space and the ground conMontana, too.” That first satellite has led to interest . from companies in California, Arizona and Utah who want to put up similar small satellites, called “Cheapsats” to perform a diversity of tasks, Twiggs said. Twiggs said that the college recently it “sees.” Every 90 originally scheduled to be launched from a space shuttle during the first NUSAT was launched from a Getaboard thousands atmosphere sometime toward the end of this year, Twiggs said. Currently students at the college are building NUSAT II, which was get good fallout from it.” cannister to pick Pole. The satellite is due to burn up in the He added, “We've contacted a lot of high tech companies and | think we'll Special satellite minutes the satellite completes an earth orbit that allows it to pick up radar He said, “Even if we don’t get the NASA grant, a number of companies have said they will want to use the consortium.” Away the out one particular radar from among part of 1987. Twiggs said, “The space shuttle tragedy will definitely set back the time when we launch, but we're confident that it will happen and we're going ahead with our efforts.” trollers at the college are in the process Innovation sunbath ing may b uring skin other types cancer and of cancer Rogers” type of cancer cure. some Dr. Walker and skin diseases may soon be as easy as getting a tan. Two researchers at the college have made significant progress in the study of a naturally occurring light-sensitive dye that shows promising possibilities in the treatment of some types of said, “Wouldn't it be great for someone who had skin cancer — instead of having to go through chemotherapy — to take a pill and sit ecome cure for s a enough to cure, just put the cattle in the barn for a week or two until the substance passes out the body, but dye itself is not destroyed and can ab- studies into the why’s of the disease led to the discovery of the dye. He added, “The dye doesn’t interfere with metabolism, and all indications Dr. Walker said, ‘There are a in the sun by the pool?” The two are working with a lightadverse dye called hypericin that they say could make the pool-side kinds of treatment possible in the not too dis- number of light-sensitive chemicals, but hypericin is one of the strongest and also is the only one that has no side cell it has no effect until activated by light, but when the light does strike, “it and Dr. Edward B. Walker, a chemist tant future. Dr. Walker said the dye is found ina plant called St. Johns Wort and in certain kinds of buck wheat and was first who noticed when cows who ate the plants cellular diseases. Dr “Diane... microbiologist 5S. — who Morhe, = is 2 nationally recognized for her work with bacteria, has studied light-sensitive chemicals for the past seven years, are combining efforts to develop a “Buck effects.” When the hypericin is absorbed by a just goes wild.” Dr. Walker said, “When the light is developed skin sores if they were out in present the hypericin absorbs it and the uses the energy to destroy the cell. The sun. The bovine disease is easy sorb more light, but eventually it will pass out of the body.” are that the dye is unaltered by the body until light hits it.” Hypericin and a sun lamp could destroy a tumor close to the skin, for example, and bronchial cancers could be treated with a combination of hypericin and fiber optics. The chemist said that the big problem is getting the hypericin into the diseased cells while avoiding healthy ones. ‘We have to modify the dye so that -