The Willow Glen Resident

Jamie Silva

Broadway student spends summer exploring Arctic in NASA program

Jamie Silva, 17, is serving aboard Coast Guard ship

By Christine Frey

While most teenagers are spending the summer at the beach, Broadway High School student Jamie Silva is braving the freezing temperatures of the Arctic.

The 17-year-old is participating in NASA's Arctic Exploration, an expedition investigating the region's environment and landmarks. Silva will track the 39-day voyage through journal entries she'll post daily on the Internet.

Two days before her July 22 departure, Silva was anxiously finishing the educational project she will present to Alaskan schoolchildren. Using a software program called The Sky, she will connect her laptop in Alaska to a telescope in Pasadena via satellite and produce pictures of outer space on her computer. Viewing the constellations over Southern California should be an exciting experience up north, where the sun shines 24 hours a day.

The constant daylight is just one of the many environmental differences to which Silva will have to acclimate during the exploration. The Arctic's 0-degree to 30-below temperatures are quite a contrast to the Bay Area's recent heat wave. And considering that she has never been on a boat, living on the U.S. Coast Guard's Polar Star will be an adjustment. Silva is not daunted by these changes, however. "I think it's going to be a great experience. It's like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I'm glad I was chosen," she said.

Silva has worked at NASA for about seven months through its Youth at Risk program, which offers internships to challenged teenagers. Mark Leon, manager of NASA's Learning Technologies Project and a martial arts instructor at Broadway, said students who exhibit discipline and a positive attitude are chosen for the program.

Broadway assistant principal Devin Blizzard, who introduced Silva to Leon, is amazed by the opportunity Silva has been given. "It's something that initially was beyond imagination ... initially something that neither she nor the school would have imagined. But it's great when students have the opportunity to do things they hadn't even imagined."

Blizzard and other members of Broadway's staff will communicate with Silva via email during the expedition. And they are not the only ones. Silva will correspond with Internet users throughout the world, answering their email questions about the three missions NASA scientists will undertake during the expedition.

In mid-August, they will explore a possible paleontological location of a great mastodon, an extinct mammal. Then they will travel to the site of an 1890 New Bedford whaling fleet shipwreck. Robots will be sent down into the wreck to map the fleet three-dimensionally. Using the map, scientists will create a virtual reality program that will enable them to "walk" through the sunken ships. During the last week of the exploration, they will search for sunken treasure in an underwater frigate.

Those interested in tracking the progress of the expedition can do so via its Web site at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/arctic.

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