Santa Clara University students are learning how to run space satellites thanks to a program with NASA's Ames Research Center.
The program places students into a mobile laboratory, which spends time on campus, at the research center or anywhere it needs to be to get a signal and communicate with the satellites. Officials said the university is the only school in the country where students operate government satellites.
Jake Hedlund and Nick Xydes, both engineering students at Santa Clara University, are participating in the program. The students are given missions that include gathering science data and sending commands to the satellite to tell it to run an experiment.
"We have living quarters," Xydes said. "We can eat, sleep while we do operations."
The mobile laboratory will be making trips to local schools in the future to show off the technology and try to get younger students interested in science and engineering.
