Student-designed satellite heads for space today

After more than a year's wait in California, some impromptu surgery employing a dental mirror to replace its clock battery and, finally, a trip to Kazakhstan, a student-designed satellite from the University of Illinois could be orbiting Earth early Thursday.

The Illinois Observing Nanosatellite, ION for short, was to launch sometime today from the Russian Federal Space Agency's Baikonur Cosmodrome, on a missile designed to carry nuclear warheads and now used for lofting commercial satellites into space. The world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, launched from Baikonur in 1957.

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