The Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE) will fly on the space shuttle Columbia (STS-87) as part of the Fourth United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-4). During this 16-day mission, scheduled for launch on November 19, 1997, a team of Renssealaer faculty, staff, and students will monitor and control the IDGE from a control facility on the Rensselaer campus. The IDGE, a materials science experiment on solidification, was developed by Rensselaer in collaboration with NASA's Lewis Research Center (LeRC). The project is centered on the observation of dendrites growing in the microgravity environment aboard the Space Shuttle's USMP platform.

A visitor's room has been set up at Rensselaer to accommodate mission operations and community interest. Video and computer monitors will display the experiment telemetry from the shuttle and NASA control centers. Posters, models, demonstrations (including a drop tower producing 0.6 seconds of microgravity), and presentations about space flight, microgravity, and materials science will be available.

Check the Where we go from here page for details on school group tours of the visitor's room.

To schedule a visit by school classes, call the Greater Capital Region Teacher Center at 479-4083. Visits will begin November 20 at 8:00 a.m. or in case of a delayed launch, the morning after the shuttle launches, and will continue until the suttle lands (approximately 16 days after launch).

The visitor's room will also have open hours for the public on evenings (6-10 pm Mon-Fri except Thanksgiving Thurs. and Fri.). Weekend hours are from 12-6. No appointment is necessary. At the top of each hour, IDGE representatives will present a brief introduction to materials science and microgravity.