GRAND FORKS (AP) - An Earth-observing camera built by students and faculty at the University of North Dakota is getting ready for orbit.

AgCam will monitor the health of crops and other plants. The sophisticated camera is to leave campus Tuesday for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will be prepared for launch aboard the space shuttle to the International Space Station.

A public send-off event is scheduled tonight in Clifford Hall Auditorium on campus.

AgCam is scheduled for a late-October launch. It will be installed at the International Space Station by astronauts and is to begin sending data during the 2009 growing season.

Farmers, ranchers, tribal officials, land-use managers and educators will have an opportunity to request assessments of the vegetation on their fields. The images also will be available to the public at www.umac.org.

A student-run Scientific Operations Center at UND will send commands to AgCam daily, and process and deliver images returned each day.

AgCam is connected with the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium, which is headquartered at UND's Northern Great Plains Center for People and the Environment.

"The consortium exists to bring benefits from the space program to residents of the region," said Center Director George Seielstad.

More than 40 students and numerous faculty in eight university departments have worked on AgCam over the past seven years. Fourteen graduate student thesis projects were based on research for the project.

"My greatest reward has been to see the careers (students) have been able to jump-start because of their experience with AgCam," said project director Doug Olsen.

Olsen and some students will be driving the AgCam to Florida. The instrument, which weighs about 120 pounds, is not very large. Seielstad said it would fit on an average office desk.

AgCam was supposed to be installed in the International Space Station in 2004, but the Columbia space shuttle disaster changed those plans.