Even before the excitement has died down from the announcement that the National Science Foundation had chosen Lead for the new national underground science laboratory comes news that a local geological engineer and his colleagues were approved for a $450,000 experiment at the mine.

"A group of me and four of my colleagues went together and wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation, and we ended up getting it," Bill Roggenthen, co-principal investigator of the project and professor of geological engineering at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, said Wednesday.

Roggenthen said that the three-year, $450,000 project was approved Sunday and will begin in the fall.

"What we will be doing is to test how much improvement you get with a 3D array of seismometers in terms of sensitivity. It's my hope that we are able to advance the field of seismology and our understanding of the deep interior of the Earth," he said.

Seismology is the study of earthquakes and their effects, and seismometers are the instruments that measure them.

Roggenthen said that Homestake was a perfect fit because of its unique structure.

"This project can just be done much easier at Homestake, primarily because it has great access," Roggenthen said. "And with a 3D array, you need to be able to distribute the seismometers throughout the area, and with Homestake, that access is possible."

The project will be the first of its kind in the world and hopefully, Roggenthen said, will become a unique part of the mine's facilities.

"It's an experiment, but it's going to become part of Homestake and hopefully allow us to understand how the facility is behaving," he said.

The NSF announced Tuesday that Homestake was the choice from among four finalist sites for the underground lab. Now, a group of scientists supporting the Homestake proposal will get up to $15 million over the next three years to develop a detailed design.

If the lab is built - and Tuesday's decision does not guarantee that - it could help create billions of dollars in economic development over the course of decades, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said.

Scientists want an underground laboratory because the depth protects sensitive experiments from cosmic rays. The Homestake mine is 8,000 feet deep, with hundreds of miles of tunnels at dozens of levels, and it could become the world's deepest lab.

Homestake was chosen by a 22-member panel of impartial experts convened by the NSF. The panel spent months reviewing underground lab proposals from South Dakota, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota.