Education News at NASA

NASA Explorer Schools Program Is Tops in Government Innovations

The NASA Explorer Schools program was chosen as one of the “Top 50 Government Innovations” for 2006 by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The selected programs represent the U.S. Government’s most innovative and results-oriented efforts in various areas, including education and training.

“NASA’s Explorer Schools program exemplifies the Agency’s tradition of investing in the Nation’s education programs and supporting educators who play a key role in preparing, inspiring, encouraging, and nurturing young minds,” said Angela Phillips Diaz, NASA’s acting assistant administrator for education.

The program establishes a 3-year partnership between the Agency and teams of teachers and education administrators from diverse communities across the country. In its fourth year, the program is designed for education communities to help improve teaching and learning in science, math, and technology. It aims to attract and retain students, teachers, and faculty through a progression of educational opportunities.

The Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, home of the Ash Institute, announced the selections in March.

Newest Explorers Become Astronauts

After 18 months of intense training, NASA’s latest astronaut candidates are now officially astronauts. The class of 11, including 3 educator astronauts selected from teachers across the Nation, received NASA astronaut pins in a February 2006 graduation ceremony. This is NASA’s first astronaut class that is focused from the start on realizing the Vision for Space Exploration.

The candidates were selected in May 2004. They reported to Johnson Space Center that summer to begin training, which included water and land survival courses, T-38 flight instructions, and space shuttle and International Space Station systems training. The class also completed numerous qualifying exams and flight evaluations. They now join the rest of the astronaut corps in supporting space flight in technical roles and pursuing more specialized training for future assignments.

Student testers enjoyed the NASA Kids’ Club Web site and gave feedback that helped in its development.

“What I’m looking forward to most is the future,” said Jose Hernandez, astronaut candidate graduate. “I think it’s a bright and exciting future for the Space Program.”

Immediate duties include support roles in the space shuttle and space station programs, and positions in robotics and space flight medicine. The new astronauts and their work assignments are: Joe Acaba, mission specialist-educator, space station branch and education; Richard Arnold, mission specialist-educator, space station branch and education; Randy Bresnik, pilot, space station branch; Christopher Cassidy, mission specialist, space station operations branch and capcom branch; James Dutton, pilot, exploration branch; Jose Hernandez, mission specialist, shuttle branch; Shane Kimbrough, mission specialist, safety branch; Thomas Marshburn, mission specialist, space station branch and exploration branch; Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, mission specialist-educator, space station branch and education; Robert Satcher, mission specialist, robotics branch and space station branch; and Shannon Walker, mission specialist, space station operations branch and capcom branch.

NASA Launches Kids’ Club

A team of NASA educators has helped create a dozen games that make up the first phase of the new NASA Kids’ Club, which uses “stealth learning” to draw children in. In other words, while children are having fun launching rockets or driving across Mars, they are also learning about science and mathematics.

The games are divided into five levels, each associated with a grade from kindergarten through fourth. The games are based on national standards and involve skills appropriate for each grade level.

	A brother-sister team of testers (above) worked together to solve a problem on the NASA Kids’ Club site. The new NASA Kids’ Club (left) has five levels of games, an art area, and updates of new missions and other exciting things that are happening at NASA.

The following are some of the fun and educational games featured in the NASA Kids’ Club:

• Grab It: This game lets children control the space shuttle’s robotic arm to grab things that go together. It involves picking out which things begin with the same letter—a kindergarten-level skill.
  
• Airplane High-Low: This game challenges children to guess which number the game’s airplane mascot is thinking of. It helps the players develop first grade-level number-order skills.
  
• Star Fall: This fast-paced game involves clicking on groups of stars to clear as many of them off the board as possible. Not only does the game rely on pattern-recognition skills, children also learn about astronomy in the process.
  
• Flip Time: This memory game challenges players to match pictures of clocks in order to make an airplane take off. Children match digital and analog clocks with the same times, using third grade time-telling skills.
  
• Go to the Head of the Solar System: In this game, children test how much they know about space by picking the planets that best answer a series of questions. The child-friendly interface makes it both fun and educational.
  

Tunisian children were very interested in the Solarscopes brought from the United States.

Under a science and technology agreement between the United States and Tunisia, sponsored by NASA and the U.S. State Department, NASA researchers flew to Tunisia in northern Africa to experience the October 3, 2005, solar eclipse with more than 80 Tunisian students. The Goddard Space Flight Center solar scientists, astrophysicist Joseph Davila and planetary research scientist Mehdi Benna, a native Tunisian, were invited to participate by the Tunisian Young Science Association (AJST).

Participating in this event was particularly important to Benna, because he was a member of AJST as a child. “I was delighted to have the chance to give something back to my country and perhaps influence the career choices of young people, since this group helped to steer me toward a career as a scientist,” he said.

In preparation for the eclipse, two Tunisian students and a film crew visited Davila and Benna at Goddard to practice setting up some of the experiments to be carried out during the solar event.

Once the scientists arrived in Tunisia’s capital city of Tunis, they participated in a press roundtable at the U.S. Embassy. Representatives attended from the major French language and Arabic newspapers in Tunis and from two major radio stations. In a series of lectures at the City of Science, a new science museum in Tunis, Benna and Davila spoke to approximately 100 students and members of the public.

Benna spoke about the history of Mars exploration and the anatomy of space missions, including how a spacecraft is built, tested, and launched; what kind of data scientists expect; and how long it takes to build and test such missions. Davila discussed the current state of space weather forecasting. Finally, Benna and Davila participated along with a professor of history at the University of Tunis in a public discussion that covered the history and mythology of solar eclipses in past civilizations.

The Goddard scientists then traveled to the southern city of Douz at the edge of the Sahara, where they set up a number of experiments to be carried out by the students. Several telescopes were also available for public viewing during the eclipse. Using these telescopes, along with solar scopes, models, and diagrams, the students explained the science of eclipses to hundreds of public observers.

Applause broke out as the Moon moved across the Sun, eventually covering 95 percent of it. “It was a beautiful twilight-covered desert, and all activity stopped for a few minutes. People gazed upward, while the camels, unimpressed, sat quietly on the ground,” Davila said.

A major Tunisian movie studio, Cinetelefilms, is producing a documentary covering the collaborative event. This film is slated to become a pilot for a proposed series of science documentaries aimed at promoting mutual understanding between the West and the Arab world.

The NASA visit prepared the students for the March 29, 2006, total eclipse of the Sun, in northern Africa.

Student-Built Buoy Launches Ocean Studies

Over the winter holidays, high school sophomore Katie Nance painted her room a cool shade of blue; though, when she and her schoolmates had to paint the ocean buoy they recently constructed for an international oceanography program, they chose a much bolder color. Their bright-red buoy was launched off the coast of Antarctica in January. Through a satellite connection, the buoy sent back data on ocean temperatures that are available to scientists and students around the world.

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Two Argonautica students work on a temperature sensor.

The buoy project is part of an education program called Argonautica, organized by the French space agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). With help from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a small group of students from a California-based French/American school, the Lycée International of Los Angeles, became the first U.S. participant. About a dozen team members were drawn from different classes, ranging in age from 9 to 17. Dr. Mohamed Abid, a senior systems engineer for NASA’s Ocean Surface Topography Mission, served as their advisor.

Argonautica is designed to help students learn about the oceans and the role of satellites in oceanography. Participants are given an empty plastic shell from which they have to construct a functional buoy fitted with sensors capable of withstanding harsh ocean conditions, plus an anchor to keep the buoy in position as it drifts with the currents.

The first challenge, said seventh grader Turner Edwards, “was figuring out what we wanted to measure. Some wanted to measure the salt in the water, some temperature, and some currents. It was hard to decide.”

Luckily, they had expert help. Abid is the author of a new book entitled “Spacecraft Sensors.” “We had a number of options,” he said, “so we made lists of the pros and cons of our different choices. We finally chose the temperature sensor.”

The next steps were to understand how the sensors work, test them, and make sure they will survive in salt water. For Nance, the hardest part of the project was all the calculations that needed to be done. “We had to figure out where we were going to put the sensors, how much weight needed to be in the anchor, and how many volts we needed for the Argos card—the satellite transmitter.”

The completed buoy was equipped with seven temperature sensors and an anchor, which was constructed from plastic piping and cement. The final step was the red paint. “It looked really good,” said Nance, “but there’s not much you can do with a buoy.”

Students tracked their buoy and other Argonautica-built buoys from CNES’s education Web site and correlated the data they collected with measurements of sea surface height made by the JASON satellite, which was launched as part of a joint U.S./French mission.

“It’s great to see what they can accomplish,” said Abid. “Now that they can see what they can do, their expectations get higher. They believe that next time they can build something even more complex.”

NASA and Olympic Athletes Plan Lunar Games

With the help of several Olympic athletes, students this year were able to get a physics lesson from NASA about what it would be like to perform winter sports at the most extreme venue around—the Moon.

U.S. Olympic skier Eric Bergoust, snowboarder Hannah Teter, and bobsled team member Todd Hays were featured in 30- to 60-second NASA TV clips that explored the scientific concepts of their winning flips and rips.

Bergoust, a 1998 Olympic gold medalist, explored whether he could double his quadruple-twisting flip with a perfect landing in the Moon’s gravity, which is one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity. Teter, a gold medalist in this year’s Olympic Games (the halfpipe), showed how her skills to hit a snowboarding move called a frontside five might be used to land a lunar spacecraft. Hays, a silver medalist in the 2002 Olympic Games, discussed the importance of launching spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center and compared such launches to the running starts he uses to jump-start his bobsled.

“U.S. Olympic athletes are helping to educate our youth by comparing the physics of sports with the physics of space exploration,” said Phil West, the deputy director of education at Johnson. “We hope parents and teachers will use the clips to interest teens in math and science, because America will need them to become tomorrow’s inventors.”

Cal Poly Students Help NASA Reduce Aircraft Noise

Two Argonautica students work on a temperature sensor.

Thirteen aerospace engineering students from the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, spent part of the 2005 summer on a lake. While this may be a normal summer activity for many college students, this group of 13 made its stay at Rogers Dry Lake, located in California’s Mojave Desert, where it participated in the C-17 flight noise mitigation study, a NASA experiment that may one day make the world a quieter place.

Currently, a house within an airport’s flight path needs triple-pane windows, special doors, and extra attic and wall insulation, in order to keep aircraft noise out. Researchers from Ames Research Center and Dryden Flight Research Center want to eliminate, or at least reduce, the need for these often-costly modifications.

To do so, NASA, through the Vehicle Systems Program, is working to reduce the “noise footprint” produced by aircraft. A key component of this plan is the development of extreme short takeoff and landing (ESTOL) aircraft and procedures. The ultimate goal is to keep aircraft noise within an airport’s property. In September 2005, NASA demonstrated that aircraft capable of ESTOL could concentrate noise to a narrow area.

During the noise mitigation study, 17 microphones were positioned on the dry lakebed (covering approximately 15 square miles) to record the noise footprint of the U.S. Air Force Test Center’s C-17 Globemaster III as it made various landing approaches. In addition to conventional straight-in approaches, a new type of simultaneous and non-interfering (SNI) approach was flown. This new approach is similar to a descending spiral over the landing site.

“Preliminary results indicate that the SNI approaches will concentrate the noise footprint into a narrow area,” said John Zuk, the NASA manager who led the ESTOL research at Ames.

The tests also confirmed that the curved approaches posed no significant safety concerns and provided current commercial aircraft ride quality. “The landing approaches were simple and safe,” said NASA research pilot Frank Batteas.

The successful tests were made possible by the extraordinary efforts and ingenuity of the team to meet the challenges of a limited budget and a shortened test schedule, according to Craig Hange, project manager and principal investigator for the study.

“The team came up with a totally new way of taking noise data over a large area that not only worked well, but was less expensive by using commercially available parts and software,” said Hange. “They not only put in their ideas, but a lot of hard work made it a reality.”

“The Cal Poly students and faculty also deserve a lot of credit for taking on this new task, doing most of the grunt work, and sharing an enthusiasm that you can only get from students,” Hange added.

“Involvement in this NASA research project has taken the students’ classroom curriculum and given it a hands-on application,” said Cal Poly student lead Erika Berg.

The students also designed and built the portable workstations (made out of inexpensive plastic piping and heavy fabric) that stored the computer equipment while it was used on the lakebed.

The data collected during the tests will be very valuable for future research supporting ESTOL aircraft and may have a significant impact on airport operations around the country.

“An aircraft that could use the shorter runways of smaller regional and community airports could bring commercial air travel to approximately 97 percent of the U.S. population, because most Americans live within a half-hour of an airport,” said Zuk.

The C-17 study team was comprised of members from Ames and Dryden, Cal Poly, the U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and CENTRA Technology, Inc., of Arlington, Virginia.

NASA Announces Solar System Ambassadors Class of 2006

What do a surfer, firefighter, teacher, neurosurgeon, and award-winning book author have in common? A love of space and a desire to share that passion. They have joined a growing number of private citizens in NASA’s Solar System Ambassadors Program, which brings space information to the public through planetarium talks, telescope-viewing parties, mall displays, and other events.

Twenty-nine new ambassadors joined the program this year, bringing the total to over 450 ambassadors from all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

For swim coach and surfer Mike Olsberg, of Newport Beach, California, looking up at the stars overhead always captured his imagination, so becoming a NASA ambassador was a clear choice. “When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, it represented the culmination of all of man’s technological achievements up to that moment. Since that day, space exploration has always has been a personal interest for me,” Olsberg said.

For Kevin Kilkenny, a 15-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department, looking to the sky has been a favorite activity since he was 8 years old. “I like watching the faces of the youngsters as they learn about faraway planets and then go outside and see them through a telescope. Watching them make their own discovery is priceless,” he said. Kevin was glued to the television that summer day in 1969 when Apollo 11 made its historic landing on the Moon.

“I have known since my early childhood that I was born to teach,” said Judy M. Dominguez, a 33-year veteran retired teacher of math and science who lives in Downey, California. “I have been passionate about space, astronomy, and related subjects. I consider it a personal responsibility to communicate their importance and the wonder and joy of knowing to others,” added Dominguez.

For Dr. Ronald Ignelzi, becoming an ambassador was a chance to speak about how space technology can help improve everyday lives. Ignelzi recently retired as a neurosurgeon and lives in La Jolla, California. “I believe space exploration and NASA are a great part of our planet’s future and that already some of the technology developed for spacecraft has applications in medicine. These spinoffs have propelled medical technology and will continue to do so in the future.”

“As a longtime space cadet, I loved the idea of becoming an ambassador for the solar system,” said Dava Sobel, of East Hampton, New York, an award-winning author of popular science books.

Each ambassador agrees to hold at least four public events during the year. In 2005, ambassadors participated in 2,071 events that reached more than 1 million people. In its ninth year, the JPL-managed program prepares these volunteers through a series of Internet training courses and teleconferences. Ambassadors speak directly with scientists and engineers on missions like Cassini to Saturn, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Stardust mission that brought home comet samples. They also receive brochures, posters, DVDs, and other materials to help them in their presentations.

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