[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8162-8163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             SPACE DAY 2004

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Mervin Iverson 
Elementary School's Erin Berkey, Sarah Boyer, and Carissa Buckley on 
their selection as one of the 18 Stellar Design Challenges teams for 
Space Day 2004. I also want to recognize their teacher Katheryn Grimes 
for her strong instruction and guidance of the student team.
  Space Day is an international celebration of the accomplishments and 
opportunities of space exploration aimed at promoting student interest 
in math, science, and technology. It reaches hundreds of thousands of 
teachers and millions of students around the world.

[[Page 8163]]

  Developed by the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, 
Design Challenges is a national competition that encourages students to 
create innovative solutions to the challenges of space exploration. The 
18 Stellar Design Challenges teams were selected from more than 300 
teams who participated in the competition.
  The Iverson Elementary School team designed a tool to help explorers 
on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. The tool is designed to drill into 
ice ridges on Europa that have already been discovered by the NASA 
spacecraft Galileo.
  The remotely operated tool would also collect samples of ice and 
water, analyze their chemical compositions, measure temperatures of the 
surface ice and hypothesized ocean water underneath, and relay this 
data back to Earth. The team's project included scale drawings of the 
tool, and a science fiction story highlighting the tool being used by 
explorers on Europa.
  As a Stellar Design Challenges Team, the Iverson students will attend 
the national Space Day 2004 ceremony and meet former Senator John Glenn 
and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. They will also have the 
opportunity to share their knowledge by displaying their project to 
more than 1,200 sixth graders in the Washington, DC, area on Space Day.
  Their efforts reflect a lot of hard work, dedication and creativity 
as well as Iverson Elementary School's strong commitment to academic 
excellence. Please join me in congratulating Iverson Elementary School 
and its Stellar Design Challenges team on their impressive 
accomplishment.

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