Utah students learning the excitement of space

Anyone old enough to recall the news about Sputnik in October 1957 will also remember the shock waves of disbelief that rattled the country. In the evening, a kitchen radio broadcast the strange "beep, beep, beep" of the satellite transmission. People stood on front lawns peering at the stars, hoping for a glimpse of the satellite.

How could the Russians have achieved what American science could not?

Stunned educators beefed up science and math courses. And it worked. Space was the engine that powered many fields of scientific research. Today, America leads the world in everything from DNA studies to exploration of the deepest realms of space.

But the United States may have begun to slip backward, toward a scientific eclipse. Through lack of interest or perhaps because there is no longer a sense of urgency, important programs like the Hubble Space Telescope are losing support.

Utah Space Week, which begins today, is an effort to energize science education and show students from kindergarten through 12th grade how exciting science can be.

This is the fifth year for the observance, said Donna Trease, a teacher at Oak Hills Elementary, Bountiful, and the Space Week coordinator. Among project sponsors are school districts, NASA, The Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium, ATK Thiokol and Horace Mann Insurance, she said.

Space Week planners also work with Clark Planetarium and several institutions of higher education. Among these, Salt Lake Community College holds Space Week training sessions for teachers in November.

Every April, NASA sends educators to the state, and they speak at student assemblies. Astronauts and other experts give students a firsthand description of what they do. A student may suddenly find herself wearing a space suit, or an astronaut may show models of some of the more exotic spacecraft.

"They get so excited," she said of the students. "You know, there's just something about an astronaut."

Trease added, "I think we probably develop more scientists and more medical people and more engineers . . . from these programs than anything else." A sixth-grader may suddenly realize what a thrilling job could be ahead if he is willing to work hard at science and math.

Each school has its own observance, and not all of the schools carry out Space Week at the same time. A Bountiful elementary will hold its observances next week, because of conferences scheduled this week.

"They can do it when they want to. And NASA will be in the schools the whole month of April."