Laurel Artz remembers well the lunacy of her seventh birthday.

"Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and I wrote the astronauts a letter and got a card back," said Artz, a member of the Oswego Classroom Teachers Association. "That jump-started my love of space. I want to try to get that enthusiasm going in my students."

That drive to help her students realize cosmic wonders inspired Artz to take part in Space Day, a worldwide program of activities to generate student interest in science, math and technology. The program is geared to students in grades 4 through 8.

"Space Day is a great way to get kids excited about real-life science," said East Meadow TA member Rich Santer who, with Long Island colleagues Isabelle Glick, Eleanor Allen and Anne Wall, has followed the program since it began six years ago.

Themed "Adventure to Mars!" for 2002, this year's Space Day program focuses on the red planet, culminating on May 2 with Cyber Space Day, a two-hour Webcast. Last year's Webcast featured interviews with NASA astronauts and scientists. In the months leading up to the Webcast, students can participate

in the program's three design challenges - inventing a device for living and working on Mars; a rover for collecting data on another planet; or an electronic newspaper to transmit information from Mars back to Earth. They can participate in Student Signatures in Space, where students sign posters that are digitally photographed and later flown aboard a space shuttle mission.

Santer, Glick, Allen and Wall's sixth-graders' signatures and a class magnet experiment flew aboard a shuttle mission as part of Space Day 2001. In the spring, the group toured NASA and had a pond sample experiment flown aboard the shuttle Discovery.

"Former astronaut Dr. Margaret Rhea Seddon visited the class around the time of the official Space Day," said Santer. "This year we hope to attend Space Camp in Montreal."

Artz does an annual space unit, beginning with a history of space exploration from NASA and the Apollo missions, through the modern shuttle. Her students' signatures also hitched a ride on a shuttle mission.

To participate in Signatures in Space, applicants may e-mail requests by March 1 to signatures@mindspring.com and include school name, address, phone number, principal's name and name of the local program coordinator. Space Day is sponsored by Lockheed Martin and a coalition of 70 other organizations. For details, visit www.spaceday.com.

- Kara E. Smith

Reach for the moonbuggy

The ninth annual Great Moonbuggy Race, April 12-13 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., challenges teams of high school and college students to design and construct vehicles adapted to the engineering problems NASA faced with the rover for the Apollo lunar expeditions.

For information, go to http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov.

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