LOGAN, Utah Two Japanese college students who won a design contest may see their idea put into orbit. Their winning concept was to send a camera-equipped microsatellite to provide a unique view of the Leonid meteor shower. Their professor is seeking aid to build and launch their proposed satellite.

"We need your help to make our idea real" and launch the first satellite designed to observe meteors, Kazuya Yoshida told hundreds of experts attending the recent 14th annual Conference on Small Satellites.

The satellite would cost at least $1 million, but "I dont have so huge a budget," said Yoshida, an associate professor of aeronautics and space engineering at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

They now need help building the satellite and finding a place for it as a secondary payload on a rocket launched in the months before the annual Leonid meteors flash through the skies in November 2002, he said.

Yoshida was asking for help at the right place: Some 560 small satellite experts came to the conference from universities, space agencies, military organizations and companies around the world. The annual gathering, which ended August 24, is sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Utah State Universitys Space Dynamics Laboratory.

"Good ideas are fun to have around," said conference Chairman Frank Redd, the Utah labs deputy director.

"This is a really unique view. This is only possible from space."

Innovative proposals made one year at the conference often move toward reality in subsequent years, he said.

As for Yoshidas one-man plea for help, "I havent seen too many of those succeed where you are holding out your hand and asking somebody to fund you," Redd said. "But this is an appropriate place to do it. There is a possibility, so why not get the idea out?"

The Leonid mission was conceived by Hiroshi Hamano and Satoko Abiko, undergraduates at Tohoku University. Yoshida said it received first prize in the new idea category at an annual satellite-design contest sponsored by Japanese space agencies, academic societies and the Japan Space Forum.

The Tohoku University professor is now collaborating on the project with researchers from Santa Clara University in California. Santa Clara built a card-deck-sized "picosatellite" launched from a larger mother-ship in January.

Yoshida said meteors begin to illuminate 93 to 124 miles (150 to 200 kilometers) above Earth, and appear as low as 31 miles (50 kilometers). The microsatellite would be in a circular orbit about 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth, meaning it would have a closer view of the Leonids paths than observers on the ground. It also would see more of the sky.

The satellite a cube measuring almost 12 inches (30 centimeters) on each side would view the meteors unhindered by bad weather or urban light pollution. It also would see meteors ultraviolet emissions, which are absorbed by the atmosphere and hard to detect from the ground, Yoshida said.

Yoshida and students at Tohoku University would build a wide-angle camera to take pictures of Leonids and two spectrometers to learn about the meteors composition from their ultraviolet emissions.

On their internet website on the project http://www.astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/leonids Yoshida and colleagues ask for help with a launch vehicle, building the satellite, tracking and telemetry and, of course, money.

"Please note that since this is a low-cost, student-built satellite project, unlike a space agencys national project or commercial business, even very small money would be greatly helpful," they wrote.