Category Archives: Space participation

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space participation

Chicagoland Boy Scouts and Explorers to send research projects to the ISS

An announcement from  Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages R&D on the Int. Space Station, and the Boy Scouts of America and Exploring programs:

New Partnership Enables Chicagoland Boy Scouts and Explorers
to Send Research Projects to International Space Station

(Chicago, IL) March 26, 2015– Chicagoland Boy Scouts and Explorers will soon design and build research projects for a chance to have their experiment flown to the International Space Station.

This incredible opportunity is the result of a newly formed partnership between the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages the U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS); and local Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and Exploring programs.

CASIS and the BSA Pathways to Adventure Council will launch the Space Station National Design Challenge student research competition in Chicago this spring in an effort to spark interest and innovation in young men and women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

While the partnership is new, the BSA has a historic connection to the space program. In fact, 11 of the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon were Scouts. Additionally, former astronaut and CASIS President and Executive Director Gregory H. Johnson is a proud Eagle Scout.

“The Boy Scouts of America has created leaders for more than 100 years and our youth must now take the lead in STEM,” said Nancy Elder, Director for Strategic and Corporate Alliances for Pathway to Adventure Council. “Scouting has long embraced STEM by providing young people with real-world hands-on learning experiences ranging from cleaning habitats in national parks to programming robots. The partnership with CASIS will engage our youth and volunteers in a unique and cutting-edge experience by adding their research projects to the final frontier: space.”

The U.S. National Lab’s microgravity environment offers researchers the exclusive opportunity to conduct experiments in a setting free from the effects of gravity present on Earth. Since systems act differently in this microgravity environment, researchers are able to gather valuable insight that can help advance their work on Earth.

Space Station National Design Challenge participants will work in teams of 10-20 young men and women to conceptualize and execute their experiments, which must fit into miniature labs about half the size of a shoebox. Along with aspiring engineers and scientists, teams will include members with interests in graphic arts, drafting, moviemaking, programming and many other fields. CASIS and its industry partners will facilitate technical workshops and provide support to each team.

CASIS will then select three winning experiments to be flown to the International Space Station in the summer of 2016.

“Inspiring the next generation of explorers is at the heart of the CASIS mission,” said CASIS Director of Operations and Education Ken Shields. “This partnership exemplifies a concerted effort by both organizations to engage and energize students about STEM through an authentic learning experience that leverages the International Space Station.”

To learn more about the contest, including upcoming information sessions and how to submit a proposal, please visit: http://www.iss-casis.org/Opportunities/Solicitations/RFANationalDesignChallenge2015.aspx

Education, Solar Sci-Fi, Space participation

‘Story Time From Space’ – Stories and science demos in space on videos for kids

The Story Time From Space program was born when NASA astronaut Alvin Drew read the story “Max Goes to the Moon” by Jeffery Bennett on the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011.  The goal of the organization is to create a collection of videos of stories read from space plus science demonstrations and combine them all with free educational materials. The first set of five Max stories have been sent to the ISS.

The organization has opened a crowd-funding campaign for the project at Science & Stories on the Space Station – Indiegogo

At Story Time From Space, our goal is to use the magic and wonder of space to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and literacy learning in K-12 education programs all over the world. We are raising $55,000 to fund science demonstration equipment that will be sent to the International Space Station early this summer. We will use the hardware to produce nine fun videos showcasing the role of gravity in basic science principles. Once edited these demonstrations will join the story book readings read on orbit and then integrated with accompanying curriculum. All these videos the story book readings and science demonstrations will be available at little or no cost to schools, science centers and families everywhere. 

With real astronauts performing this accurate science in an orbiting laboratory 240 miles above Earth, the Story Time From Space team hopes to bring compelling, meaningful lessons in STEM to students and educators everywhere. Together, we can turn the space station into the world’s coolest classroom to improve STEM learning and inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, inventors and explorers! 

Here is a video from TMRO about the Story Time from Space project:

And here is the video on the Story Time From Space Indiegogo site:

Here is Al Drew reading Max Goes to the Moon from the Shuttle Discovery in space in 2011:

And here is astronaut Mike Hopkins on the Int Space Station reading Max Goes to the International Space Station:

DIY space, Space participation, The Moon

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project – needs a boost to cross the finish line

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, underway since 2008, is crowd-funding the completion of the processing of images of the Moon taken by five early unmanned lunar missions and recovered from magnetic tape: Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Last Mile – Indiegogo

Between further NASA funding and $62k raised by crowd funding in 2013 we have completed the process of digitizing almost 1500 tapes, the entire tape library from lunar orbiter.    This has created tens of terabytes of data, and over 1700 images.  Each medium resolution image is broken into 28 strips or framelets.  Each high resolution image is made from 98 framelets.  Each framelet is a file. We have over 107,000 of these files.  

Our task is to complete the processing of these files and publish them to the NASA  website where they will be free for everyone to enjoy.  We are also doing the paperwork to get the raw data and images to the National Space Science Data Center.   We had estimated the cost to NASA to complete this at about $400,000 dollars, of which they provided $300k after we finished the work from the 2013 crowd funded effort.  We originally thought that we were only going to get Lunar Orbiter II and III, but because of our previous crowd funded effort, we were able to leverage the additional $300k.  That puts us at about $100k short of what we needed to finish, and that is what we are asking you, the crowd funding community to help us with.  This gets us our very last mile to finish everything.  To see what we have done so far, here is our gallery at NASA Ames Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute web site: sservi.nasa.gov/LOIRP/loirp_gallery/

Contests and Games, Pluto and beyond, Space participation

Public invited to suggest names for features on Pluto and Charon

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft gets closer each day to Pluto and the fly-by on July 14th. The New Horizons mission, the SETI Institute and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have opened a public participation program in which you offer an addition to a list of names that will be used for features on Pluto and its moon Charon.

The SETI Institute has opened the Our Pluto website where you can submit your suggested names : Public Asked to Help Name Features on Pluto – SETI Institute.

[ Update: Here’s a Google Hangout discussion with SETI Institute scientist Mark Showalter and New Horizons mission member Cathy Olkin about the Our Pluto program:

]

The deadline for the name submissions is April 7, 2015.

Here is a statement today from the IAU that lays out the boundaries for what names will be accepted.:

Campaign for Public Participation in Naming Features on Pluto

In partnership with NASA’s New Horizons mission and the SETI Institute, the IAU is endorsing a campaign that will allow the public to participate in naming newly discovered features on Pluto and its satellites. It is expected that many new features will be discovered in the upcoming flyby of Pluto and will be available for naming. The public is invited to suggest names within the designated IAU themes for these celestial bodies.

Pluto retains a unique position in the hearts and minds of many. Pluto is a remote and enigmatic world that resides at the edge of the Solar System, in a region known as the Kuiper Belt, where it is one among many similar dwarf planets, although Pluto remains the largest discovered to date.

On 14 July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons probe will fly past Pluto, offering the first close-up look at this small, distant world and its largest satellite, Charon. These denizens of the outer Solar System will, at long last, be transformed from mysterious, hazy bodies into worlds with distinct features.

In celebration of this historic occasion, the IAU is proud to endorse a campaign that will allow members of the public to participate in naming newly imaged and identified features on the surfaces of Pluto and its natural satellites.

This naming campaign is a partnership between the NASA’s New Horizons project, the SETI Institute and the IAU.

You are invited to visit the website ourpluto.seti.org, where you can vote for the names that you think should be used to identify the most prominent features on both Pluto and Charon. You can also suggest additional names. These must be associated with a set of accepted themes set out by the IAU’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) related to mythology and the literature and history of exploration:

Pluto:

  • Names for the Underworld from the world’s mythologies.
  • Gods, goddesses, and dwarfs associated with the Underworld.
  • Heroes and other explorers of the Underworld.
  • Writers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
  • Scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Charon:

  • Destinations and milestones of fictional space and other exploration.
  • Fictional and mythological vessels of space and other exploration.
  • Fictional and mythological voyagers, travellers and explorers.

Styx:

  • River gods.

Nix:

  • Deities of the night.

Kerberos:

  • Dogs from literature, mythology and history.

Hydra:

  • Legendary serpents and dragons.

Please note, however, that votes for other themes will not be taken into account, incl. the following, since these themes have already been used on Mercury, Venus and Mars:

  • Space missions and spacecraft names.
  • Authors, artists, directors and producers of the fiction of exploration.
  • Explorers of the Earth, air and seas.

The campaign ends on 7 April 2015, after which the New Horizons team will sort through the names and submit their recommendations to the IAU. The IAU will have the final decision on how the names are used.

DIY space, Mars, Space participation

Video: Mars One CEO responds to questions about the project

Following up on the recent criticisms of the Mars One project,  CEO Bas Lansdorp responds point by point in this posting : Mars One’s CEO Bas Lansdorp answers questions about mission feasibility – Mars One

And in this video:

What do you think of the recent news articles that doubt the feasibility of Mars One?

At Mars One we really value good criticism because it helps us to improve our mission. We get a lot of criticism from our advisors and that is also exactly what we want from them. The recent bad press about Mars One was largely caused by an article on medium.com, which contains a lot of things that are not true. For example, the suggestion was made that our candidates were selected on the basis on how much money they donate to Mars One. That is simply not true and this is very easy to find that on our website. There are a lot of current Round Three candidates that did not make any donations to Mars One and there are also lot of people that did not make it to the third round that contributed a lot to Mars One. The two things are not related at all and to say that they are is simply a lie. The article also states that there were only 2,700 applications for Mars One which is not true. We offered the reporter, the first journalist ever, access to our list of 200,000 applications but she was not interested in that. It seems that she is more interested in writing a sensational article about Mars One than in the truth.

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