The student-built unmanned sailboat S.S. Morning Star has entered new territory! Educational Passages reports that the vessel launched from the University of Washington’s R/V Thompson last August is alive and well just north of Hawaii. This is the furthest west that any of the GPS-equipped 5 foot sailboats in the program has traveled in the Pacific Ocean, and its position on the globe required data managers to actually rewrite code so they could keep up with its progress!

Follow its track here:  http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_ep_2015_1.html

The S.S. Morning Star was built by students at Tillamook High School during the spring of 2015, using materials provided to them by the Oregon Coast STEM Hub.  The crew of the R/V Thompson released the boat at sea on August 15th during its research expedition to the Axial Seamount. See photos and read a description of the deployment day on the Axial Seamount Expedition 2015 blog.

The S.S. Morning Star is the third student-built sailboat supported by the Oregon Coast STEM Hub that has been deployed in the Pacific. The other boats were built by students in Waldport (Phyxius) and in Coos Bay (S.S. Dolphin).