University students and faculty have the opportunity to participate in a new NASA project for a student-built satellite to orbit the moon. A special roundtable session about the American Student Moon Orbiter, or ASMO, project will be held on Aug. 15, 2007, at the 21st Annual AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Conference on Small Satellites, at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.


The American Student Moon Orbiter project will invite American university students and their faculty advisors to design, build, register, launch and operate the ASMO small spacecraft and its scientific payload. The student-built spacecraft could be launched to orbit the moon in 2011 in tandem with a spacecraft being developed by European students under a companion program.


The ASMO Roundtable meeting will initiate a national conversation and idea exchange with the higher education community about optional operational scenarios for the ASMO project.


Registration is not required to participate in the ASMO Roundtable. However, interested participants must be pre-registered attendees of the 21st Annual Conference on Small Satellites. The ASMO Roundtable will be held Aug. 15 at the conference.


Facilitating the ASMO Roundtable will be ASMO project manager Dr. Yvonne Clearwater from NASA�s Ames Research Center and systems engineer Steve Oleson, from NASA's Glenn Research Center. Anticipated appearances include special guests Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; professor Robert Twiggs, a world-renowned expert in small satellites from Stanford University; and Peter Klupar, chief of the Small Spacecraft Office, NASA�s Ames Research Center.

For more information, visit: http://www.smallsat.org/meetings#asmo