ITHACA, N.Y. -- With the help of Cornell University's Nanobiotechnology Center (NBTC), two students at Lansing High School in Lansing, N.Y., will see the results of three years of research and planning go far -- all the way to Mars.

Jessica Sherman and Kelly Trowbridge, both sophomores at Lansing, are two of just three students selected in a global competition to have their experiments carried on a future mission to Mars. The three students presented their plans to investigate conditions on the red planet at the Lunar and Planetary Institute's annual conference in Houston on March 14.

The two Lansing students, who competed in a worldwide contest called Student Nanoexperiments for Outreach and Observational Planetary Inquiry, sponsored by the Planetary Society, were advised by Cornell educators Carl Batt, professor of food science, and Anna Waldron, director of education at NBTC.

For the two students, the Houston conference was a rare opportunity to meet scientists interested in space travel and planetary research and to see their poster presentation hung beside those of eminent Ph.D.s. "Science is something I've always liked," says an excited Trowbridge, who plans to study chemistry at the university level.

The Lansing students' experiment is designed to test how copper -- more commonly used in plumbing, electrical wiring and industrial applications -- will weather in the dust-laden Martian environment. The tiny apparatus is an unassuming half-cylinder of highly oxidizing copper piping whose surface is divided into five segments, each bearing a different texture. "We're looking to see how it will react," says Sherman. "Does it turn green, does it disintegrate, does the dust eat away at it or will it just pile up, will any reactions occur?" But, she said, because the experiment will remain on the Martian surface, "the hardest thing is that all we'll have is pictures to tell us." The Lansing students' experiment, and one submitted by Lucas Moller of Moscow Junior High School in Idaho, originally were to be sent aboard the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander mission. But the mission was canceled, and now possible plans include the experiments being carried on Britain's Beagle 2 on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission, France's Netlander, or NASA's Mars landers or Scout missions.

The two students began working on their project in 1999 when they were seventh graders at Lansing Middle School and already interested in scientific discovery. Waldron, then a science enrichment teacher at Lansing, suggested that the two consider entering the Planetary Society contest. When Waldron moved to NBTC, she continued to act as coach and coordinator of the young women's project. "I was involved in the Mars rover project with Cornell scientists, which is why this contest interested me," said Waldron. "I thought, how great to actually send something to Mars that the girls designed and built. It was exciting for me and for them."

Batt, who also is co-director of NBTC, is enthusiastic about being scientific mentor to the Lansing students. "This is a good example of mentoring young women in science and engineering," he says. "It's what this university should do more of -- leverage its resources to benefit the community."

The Lansing students had to meet an extraordinary challenge in entering the competition. Experiments had to be compact enough to fit within a cylinder that was 1 centimeter in diameter and 1 centimeter in height and that had a total mass of no more than 3 grams. The experiments also had to be self-contained and to not rely on power from a Mars lander. Since the first design, the students have been allowed to enlarge their experiment to observe additional textures of copper. It now measures 5 centimeters by 2 centimeters.

The Planetary Society funded the building of the experiments, including the cost of the materials, construction and testing. Visionary Products Inc. of Utah built the test units. The society, which was founded in 1980 by a group of astronomers, including the late Carl Sagan of Cornell, advances the exploration of the solar system and has members in more than 140 nations.

NBTC is a National Science Foundation-funded center for the collaboration between life scientists, physical scientists and engineers to apply the tools and processes of nano-microfabrication to build devices for studying biosystems and to learn from biology how to create better micro-nanoscale devices.

NOTE: This release was reported and written by science-writing intern Lissa Harris.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.

o The Planetary Society: http://www.planetary.org/

o NBTC: http://www.nbtc.cornell.edu/

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