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 Red Cloud Indian School Themis Project Red Cloud Indian School is one of the ten sites selected to be a part of the NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (Themis) Program, and the only site in South Dakota . Students and teachers from ten schools have been selected by the Themis program to help scientists investigate the mystery of the Northern Lights. The schools from eight states were competitively selected to be the hosts of a $20,000 magnetometer installation at each school. The instrument will be used to measure changes in Earth's invisible magnetic field, which will help scientists uncover the causes of these spectacular natural light shows. For decades, scientists have understood many of the basic ingredients that lead from solar storms to auroral displays, but the exact chain of events that leads from one stage to the other has been illusive. Scientists plan to line-up five satellites in NASA's Themis program to watch as one of these storm events plays itself out in space and time. By carefully tracking the sequence of changes at each satellite, scientists will be able to conclusively show just how the triggering events for aurora are actually orchestrated. They will be able to say ‘First this happens, and then this happens…” This will be a major breakthrough for scientists studying aurora.
The ten magnetometer being installed in the competitively-selected schools will provide scientists with detailed data about what Earth's magnetic field is doing during a ‘magnetic storm'. This data will be compared to the timeline of events which scientists will put together from the five satellites, and help scientists test which theory is correct. Teachers will be able to integrate this data and scientific findings into their classroom work, and show students what the actual scientific research process is like.
Red Cloud Indian School is scheduled to have the magnetometer installation on Thursday morning, October 14, 2004. The Red Cloud High School 's Science classes will have the opportunity to assist with the installation process of the magnetometer. You can lean more about Red Cloud and the Themis Program by visiting their website.
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Vassilis Angelopoulos, a research physicist at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory will lead the project. "This is probably the oldest and most important problem to solve in the field, and that is why a very large international magnetospheric community is behind it.” Team members include scientists from Germany , Austria , France , Canada , Netherlands , Japan and Russia , as well as investigators from UCLA, the University of Colorado in Boulder , Johns Hopkins University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center . 
The instruments will also help students explore space weather and the influence of solar storms. Mr. Gehman is a veteran teacher with 16 years of experience teaching high school science. While working at Red Cloud High school , he became involved in numerous grant projects and organizations. His concern for the lack of involvement of minority students in science encouraged him to submit the proposal for the Themis Program. The emphasis on inquiry-based science and participation in projects that involve students directly in the data collecting process are areas of interest for Gehman.