Category Archives: Space participation

Nine year old wins contest to name OSIRIS-REx target asteroid

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission will take off in 2016 on a mission to visit the near-Earth carbonaceous asteroid (101955) . It will grab a sample of the object and bring it back to earth for analysis.

The name 101955 is, to say the least, a bit boring. So the University of Arizona (home of the OSIRIS-REx mission lead team), The Planetary Society and MIT Lincoln Laboratory (the home institution of the discoverers of the asteroid) sponsored a contest to give it a new name.

Today it was announced that the name Bennu was selected. It was proposed by Mike Puzio, age 9, of North Carolina. He said

that the large heron-like Touch-and-Go Sample Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm and winged OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made him think of Bennu. Puzio stated, “The winged OSIRIS-REx and its heron-like TAGSAM evoke attributes of Bennu, as does the egg shape of the asteroid itself.”

Bennu was an important avian deity in ancient Egypt and one of the symbols of the god Osiris. Egyptians usually depicted Bennu as a gray heron. The double nature of asteroids delivering life’s molecules and sometimes bringing destruction such as the recent fall in Chelyabinsk, Russia, inspired the mission name, OSIRIS-REx, and now the asteroid’s name.

More here:

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.

===

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.

===

A video of yesterday’s SS2 flight:

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