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The one-inch mirror shown here is one of nearly nine hundred polished by dozens of students teams of elementary, middle and high school students across the nation as part of STARSHINE, a student spacecraft built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. After being coated with a protective transparent layer of Silicon Dioxide at Hill Air Force Base, they are being mounted on the surface of the spacecraft. STARSHINE is being deployed into a highly inclined low-earth orbit from a Hitchhiker canister on mission STS-96, targeted to launch May 20. After deployment from the Shuttle in May, the spacecraft will reflect flashes of sunlight to observers on the earth during the mission. This twinkling satellite will be naked-eye visible against the star background for about six months during recurring morning and evening twilight periods to student observers around the world KSC-99pp0416
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The one-inch mirror shown here is one of nearly nine hundred polished by dozens of students teams of elementary, middle and high school students across the nation as part of STARSHINE, a student spacecraft built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. After being coated with a protective transparent layer of Silicon Dioxide at Hill Air Force Base, they are being mounted on the surface of the spacecraft. STARSHINE is being deployed into a highly inclined low-earth orbit from a Hitchhiker canister on mission STS-96, targeted to launch May 20. After deployment from the Shuttle in May, the spacecraft will reflect flashes of sunlight to observers on the earth during the mission. This twinkling satellite will be naked-eye visible against the star background for about six months during recurring morning and evening twilight periods to student observers around the world
The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.
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