The latest presentation to the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) study group is now posted in the FISO Working Group Presentations Archive. Both slides (pdf) and audio (mp3) are available for the talk, Highlights of the NRC Report on NASA’s Strategic Direction, Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com, January 30, 2013.
Here’s a message from the Titan and Icy Worlds Education and Public Outreach Teams at NASA JPL:
Dear Teachers and Students,
NASA is holding an essay contest about Saturn’s moon Titan & Jupiter’s moon Europa for students in the United States in grades 5-12.
.The contest deadline is February 28, 2013. The contest website is here: http://icyworlds.jpl.nasa.gov/contest/.
Questions about the Titan & Europa essay contest can be sent to: titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov.
The topic of the Titan & Europa essay is either a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan or to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Both of these missions would study a world that is exciting for astrobiologists(*).Your assignment is to decide which of the proposed missions would be more interesting to you, and why. Be creative, be original, and ask good questions that you hope the mission would answer.
The Titan mission would include a Titan orbiter and a Titan balloon. The Europa mission would include a Europa orbiter and a Europa lander. The orbiters, balloon, and lander would each have science instruments to study either Titan or Europa.
In your essay, you can include information about what science instruments you would put on the orbiter and balloon or lander, if you wish, based on what you hope to find on Titan or Europa.
Winning essays will be posted on a NASA website, and winners and their classes will be invited to participate in a videoconference or teleconference with NASA scientists.
Contest videos about Astrobiology, Titan, and Europa can be found here:
http://icyworlds.jpl.nasa.gov/contest/videos/
(*) Astrobiologists are scientists who study the origins, evolution, future and distribution of life in the universe. The main question astrobiologists are trying to answer is: “Is there life beyond Earth?”
Good luck!
Best wishes,
The Titan and Icy Worlds NASA Astrobiology Institute Education and Public Outreach Teams
titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov
Here’s an update on the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) project, which currently involves 9 European universities : ESA’s student satellite takes important step towards space – Education/ESA
The mission’s primary goal is to provide students with extensive, hands-on experience of a space project. This will equip them with the necessary skills to confidently enter the high-technology workplace of Europe’s future.
The university collaboration is now working with ALMASpace S.r.l., an Italian company that is a spinoff of satellite group at the University of Bologna.
The mission’s main objectives are to measure the ionizing radiation environment in orbit, to test technologies for future education satellite missions and to take images of the Earth and/or other celestial bodies for outreach purposes.
The universities are providing several of the subsystems such as a microcamera from DTU in Denmark and a radiation detector from the University of Budapest.
The satellite will be around 40kg in mass and measure about 33x33x63cm . It will be launched in 2015-16 and its mission is designed to last for at least six months.
The project is a continuation of an ESA student satellite program:
ESEO is the third mission within ESA’s Education Satellite Programme. It builds upon the experience gained with SSETI Express, launched in 2005, and the YES2 tether and re-entry capsule experiment, launched in 2007.
Some news of amateur astronomy accomplishments:
Here is a story about amateur astronomers using the sophisticated technique of microlensing to discover a multiple-planet system.
===
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics award a total purse of $30,000 to amateur astronomers who discovered comets in 2012:
Nearly all comet discoveries nowadays are made by automated telescopes which scan the skies with robotic eyes and check new appearances in a computer. But the Edgar Wilson Award celebrates the few lone amateurs that still practice the old ways of comet watching, scanning the skies during freezing cold nights to get that once-in-a-lifetime finding. Spotting comets is very competitive because the first person to report it gets the honor of having the comet named for him or herself.
The five winners this year all made their discoveries in 2011. For most of the recipients, it is their first time winning. The prize money was split evenly among the discoveries.
Check out this zoomable satellite image of a snow covered Britain: Britain in the snow: as seen from space – guardian.co.uk.