Category Archives: Education

Education, Rockets, Space participation

Galactic Unite lesson plans based on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test flights

Yesterday. Virgin Galactic‘s SpaceShipTwo (SS2)vehicle made its first rocket powered test flight. VG has created an education program called Galactic Unite with STEM lesson plans based around the SS2 test flights: Galactic Unite Lesson Plans are now live! – Virgin Galactic

Galactic Unite Lesson Plans are now live!

Virgin Galactic and Galactic Unite announce the first of their lesson plans and resources!

These aim to engage and inspire educators and students around Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo test flight milestones.

These aim to engage and inspire educators and students around Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo test flight milestones. You can now download free lesson plans, activities and resources from http://virg.in/zUehN , which are pitched at students aged 5-18. Teachers can use these to enhance technology and engineering lessons, as well as help develop aerospace career paths for students around the world. We hope this encourages many more fledgling rocket scientists out there to reach for the stars!

Stay tuned for more exciting news about Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo and our educational programs via our Galactic Unite website or Virgin Galactic website, Twitter and Facebook.

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And here is a description of the lesson plans at  Virgin Unite – Galactic Unite:

Galactic Unite Lessons Plans for Educators

Virgin Galactic and Galactic Unite announce the first of their lesson plans and resources!

These aim to engage and inspire educators and students around Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo test flight milestones. You can now download free lesson plans, activities and resources below, which are pitched at students aged 5-18. Teachers can use these to enhance technology and engineering lessons, as well as help develop aerospace career paths for students around the world. We hope this encourages many more fledgling rocket scientists out there to reach for the stars!

The lesson plans are available here:

Lesson Plan #1: Paper Airplane Designs for Safe Landings 
As with the glider test flights of SpaceShipTwo, the most important part to ensure a successful mission is the ability to secure a safe landing.  Test a design’s effect on an aircraft’s landing ability with the first lesson plan ‘Paper Airplane Designs for Safe Landings’ where students will create different paper airplane designs, test and study them, to see which ones land the safest.

Lesson Plan #2: WhiteKnightTwo
In the second lesson plan, explore all the ins-and-outs of WhiteKnightTwo, one of the most unique aircrafts in the skies!

Lesson Plan #3: The Design and Test Flight Milestones of SpaceShipTwo
There are a lot of steps you have to take before you can go into space! In the third lesson plan, follow the timeline of SpaceShipTwo from design, to building the aircraft, and successful test flights.

Lesson Plan #4: Careers in Aerospace
Space exploration and commercial space travel is a growing field.  In this final lesson plan, students will learn about potential careers in aerospace.

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Test Flight Lesson Plans Student Survey

Stay tuned for more exciting news about Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo and our educational programs via our Galactic Unite website or  Virgin Galactic website, Twitter and Facebook.

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A video of yesterday’s SS2 flight:

http://youtu.be/HLDmcjeDohc

Education, Eyes in the Sky, Space participation

Video: Students take EarthKAM images from ISS

This NASA video presents the EarthKAM program, which lets students control a camera on the International Space Station to take images of the earth.

Caption:

Since the earliest days of the space program, astronauts have taken photos of the Earth from space to capture the beauty of the planet and to document the impacts of man-made and natural events. While only a small percentage of people are fortunate enough to witness this view firsthand, since 2001 the EarthKAM investigation has enabled students to remotely program a camera positioned in an Earth-facing window of the International Space Station and capture their own photographs of the world from space.

Space Station Live commentator Pat Ryan recently spoke with several EarthKAM participants to learn more about how teachers and students are using this experiment to study our home planet.

Dave Curry, an 8th grade Earth and space science teacher at Holland Middle School in Holland, Pa., has incorporated EarthKAM in his classroom every year since 2006. Curry was drawn to the program because it allowed kids to get involved in doing something themselves and seeing a result from that. As Curry pointed out, “Middle school is really an age where we try to hook kids on science.”

Two of Curry’s students, Alison Castronuovo and Andrew Harman, shared with Space Station Live viewers some of the photos they captured from the station and the things they learned from studying these images. The students found more than they initially expected, because as Alison explained, “I never expected all that detail.”

View Alison’s EarthKAM photo: http://images.earthkam.ucsd.edu/main….
View Andrew’s EarthKAM photo: http://images.earthkam.ucsd.edu/main….

Teachers interested in incorporating EarthKAM into their own classrooms are invited to visit the EarthKAM site and sign up for the next mission.

https://earthkam.ucsd.edu/home

Contests and Games, Education

Puerto Rico teams win college & high school NASA moonbuggy races

NASA’s 20th Great Moonbuggy Race took place the past few days at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There were 89 teams involving over 600 high school and college students competing. The winners were announced yesterday:

Puerto Rico Teams Take Top Spots at 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race

NASA today declared the winners of the 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. Team 1 from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, won first place in the high school division; racers from the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao claimed the college-division trophy.

The winning teams outraced more than 89 teams from 23 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, India, Germany, Mexico and Russia. Approximately 600 student drivers, engineers and mechanics — plus their team advisors and cheering sections — gathered April 26-27 for the 20th “space race.”

Organized by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the race challenges students to design, build and race lightweight, human-powered buggies. Traversing the grueling half-mile course, which simulates the cratered lunar surface, race teams face many of the same engineering challenges dealt with by Apollo-era lunar rover developers at the Marshall Center in the late 1960s. The winning teams post the fastest vehicle assembly and race times in their divisions, with the fewest on-course penalties.

The team from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School, in its third year in the competition, finished the half-mile course in 3 minutes, 24 seconds. The University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, who won second place in the college division in the 2012 race, brought home a first-place win, finishing in 3 minutes, 32 seconds.

A team from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race.
Team 1 from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School
won first place in the high school division. (NASA/MSFC)

Finishing in second place this year in the high school division was Jupiter High School Team 1 of Jupiter, Fla. In third place was Jupiter High School Team 2.

International Space Education Institute/Moscow Aviation University “Team Russia” of Moscow won second place in the college division; and Middle Tennessee State University of Murfreesboro took home third place.

Race organizers presented both first-place winners with trophies depicting NASA’s original lunar rover. Sponsor SAIC of Huntsville provided every participating moonbuggy team with a commemorative plaque. Sponsor Lockheed Martin Corp. of Huntsville presented the first-place high school and college teams with cash awards of $3,000 each.

Individuals on the winning teams also received commemorative medals and other prizes. (For a complete list of additional awards for design, most improved and spirit, see below.)

The race is inspired by the original lunar rover, first piloted across the moon’s surface in the early 1970s during the Apollo 15 mission, and used in the subsequent Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Eight college teams participated in the first NASA Great Moonbuggy Race in 1994. The race was expanded in 1996 to include high school teams, and student participation has swelled each year since.

A team from University of Puerto Rico at Humacao competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race
The University of Puerto Rico at Humacao claimed
first place in the college division. (NASA/MSFC)

NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race has been hosted by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center since 1996. Major corporate sponsors for the race are Lockheed Martin Corporation, The Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Aerojet and Jacobs Engineering ESSSA Group, all with operations in Huntsville.

For more information about the race, visit http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov

For information about other NASA education programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov/education

NASA’s 20th Great Moonbuggy Race
ADDITIONAL AWARDS AND PRIZES

Neil Armstrong Best Design Award (for solving engineering problems associated with lunar travel):
Academy of Arts, Careers & Technology in Reno, Nev.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in Carbondale, Ill.

Featherweight Award (for the lightest buggy on the track):
Escuela Superior Rafaelina E. Labron Flores in Patillas, Puerto Rico
Purdue University Calumet Team 1 in Hammond, Ind.

AIAA Telemetry and Electronics Award (for the most innovative onboard data-gathering and delivery system):
Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering in Maharashtra, India

Frank Joe Sexton Memorial Pit Crew Award (for ingenuity and persistence in overcoming problems during the race. Sexton, a NASA welder who mentored numerous welders and engineers among the Marshall workforce, worked on the original lunar rover and numerous other space vehicles until his death in 2000):
Fairhope High School Team 1 and Team 2 in Fairhope, Ala.
Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville, Texas

Crash and Burn Award (for the team that endures the most spectacular vehicle breakdown):
Bevill State Community College Team 1 in Sumiton, Ala.

Spirit Award (for overall team energy, enthusiasm and camaraderie):
Petra Mercado High School in Humacao, Puerto Rico

Rookie Award (for fastest course completion by a new race team):
Escuela Superior Rafaelina E. Labron Flores in Patillas, Puerto Rico
North Dakota State University in Fargo

Most Improved Award (for the most dramatically improved engineering and performance):
Huntsville Center for Technology Team 1 in Huntsville, Ala.
Middle Tennessee State University Team 1 in Murfreesboro

Best Report Award (technical documentation of the equipment and procedures used in design, build, test and the results obtained):
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

System Safety Award
University of Alabama in Huntsville

Lunartic Award (presented by AIAA to the team in each division that wins the Moon Bowl, a lunar science quiz):
New Britain High School in New Britain, Conn.
Accurate Institute of Management & Technology in Uttar Pradesh, India

Best Question of the Rover Pioneers Award (for best question asked during an April 26 event with members of the original lunar rover team):
Cape Girardeau Career & Tech Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo. — Husan Wadi

A team from Middle Tennessee State University of Murfreesboro competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race.
Middle Tennessee State University Team 1 won
third place in the college division. (NASA/MSFC)

Contests and Games, Education, Space Systems

The Great Moonbuggy Race attracts several hundred competitors

NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center this week will host the 20th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race ®, April 25 – 27, 2013: NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race draws international field of 600 competitors to Huntsville – al.com

Updates will be posted at NASA Marshall Center (MOONBUGGYRACE) on Twitter.

Here is a video from last year’s event:

 

Activism, Education, Space Science

Videos: Planetary Society event at IAA Planetary Defense Conf.

On Wednesday of last week’s 2013 IAA Planetary Defense Conference held at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff., the Planetary Society organized a public event. It was hosted by Bill Nye the Science Guy and Planetary Society CEO and included Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold, the  Science Channel’s Meteorite Men. Below are videos of the event

Part 1:

What a night! More than 900 people gathered at Northern Arizona University on April 17, 2013 to celebrate science and people who have dedicated themselves to saving humanity from a killer asteroid. Master of Ceremonies Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society’s Director of Projects, gets the evening started, and is then joined by Planetary Radio host Mat Kaplan for a raucous What’s Up! recording session.

Part 2:

The 2013 PDC public event welcomes the co-star of the Science Channel’s popular reality show to the Northern Arizona University stage. Notkin describes his worldwide search for space rocks, and why they fascinate him.

Part 3:

The Planetary Society’s Director of Projects served as MC for the exciting public event at this year’s PDC. It was the perfect venue for Bruce to announce the winners in the latest round of Shoemaker Near Earth Object grants from the Society. These awards enable dedicated amateur astronomers and smaller professional observatories to vastly improve their ability to discover and track asteroids and comets that pose a threat to Earth.

Part 4:

The Planetary Society’s CEO was a wildly popular speaker at the PDC public event on April 17, 2013. Here’s his presentation to over 900 fans on the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff

Part 5:

Moderator Mat Kaplan of Planetary Radio leads a lively and inspiring conversation in the grand finale of the PDC public event. Four outstanding young leaders in the planetary defense community join Bill and Mat on stage:

-Flight Dynamics Engineer Brent Barbee of the Goddard Space Flight Center
-NEOWISE Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer of JPL
-Applied Physics Research Scientist Cathy Plesko of Los Alamos National Lab
-Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy David Trilling of NAU