Category Archives: Education

Activism, Education

Rockethub: Fly Student Experiment Mission to ISS 2014

Joe Latrell sends me a heads up on the TIS Rockethub crowdfunding campaign for education projects including a student experiment on the ISS:

New, Exciting Things Happening On Teachers In Space Rockethub Campaign!

RocketHub
Rockethub Campaign Begins Its Second Week!

Don’t let time get away from you and miss this opportunity to help send a student experiment to the International Space Station; support nation-wide teacher development; support student STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education;  and support ALS research and patients all at the same place and time, with just a few easy clicks! The second video is now up on the project link! New information about Skype sessions and birthday parties is up in project updates section and comments section! Visit the project link now at: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/24539-teachers-in-space-fly-student-experiment-mission-to-iss-2014

Activism, Education

Galactic Unite South Africa Scholarship Programme

An announcement from Virgin Galactic:

Virgin Galactic Announces New Scholarship to Celebrate the Launch of
Galactic Unite’S New South Africa Scholarship Programme

On Mandela Day

In celebration of the wonderful Nelson Mandela on Mandela Day, Virgin Galactic and Galactic Unite are thrilled to announce a new initiative, inspired by the great man himself. The premise of Mandela Day is that every one of us has the ability to make a positive impact in the lives of others. Galactic Unite, inspired and driven by Virgin Galactic’s Future Astronaut community, has already fostered a number of scholarships for students around the world in the STEM+ areas of education. Today, Galactic Unite are excited to announce a new strand of this – the Galactic Unite South Africa Scholarship Programme.

To mark the launch of this, the staff of Virgin Galactic are supporting the initiative with a new scholarship . They have pledged to raise the necessary funds to enable the STEM+ education of a high school student in South Africa for three years, along with an engagement programme with Virgin Galactic staff providing mentoring and support. In doing so, Virgin Galactic looks forward to supporting Galactic Unite in their vision that in this new age of commercial space travel, educating the future generations on the advances in science and technology will help unlock answers to global challenges and change the world for the better.

Activism, Education, Space Policy

Crowdsource to Mars student contest + Kickstarter interplanetary Cubesat thruster

Here are two space related crowdfunding campaigns:

The Society for International Space Cooperation (SISC) is “an educational nonprofit organization whose board includes astronauts, cosmonauts, and luminaries like director James Cameron.” They have started the project Crowdsource To Mars Online Platform & Student Contest

The Crowdsource To Mars International Online Platform and Student Competition is open to students from 12-18 years old. Its purpose is to inspire students around the world to focus their creativity on offering solutions to some of the challenges of a mission to Mars. Students work with mentors who can be family members, teachers, or science professionals. Interested students and mentors from around the world can sign up on the SISC site and find others to collaborate with on a project. Team projects with participants from multiple countries is encouraged. Online collaboration and tools will be provided for teams to be able to work together across the globe.

Winners will be awarded significant monetary prizes to support their education and given an extraordinary opportunity to meet today’s world-renowned scientists and scholars.

See the Crowdsource to Mars page for more details and for giving a donation.

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The Kickstarter  CAT: A Thruster for Interplanetary CubeSats by Benjamin Longmier, Ph.D (which I’ve mentioned before) aims to raise $200k to develop small plasma thrusters that can use water or Iodine to provide propulsion for nanosats that will be powerful and efficient enough to move them out of earth orbit and into deep space.

For more info:

http://www.spacesociety.org/crowdsourcetomars2014

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Radio

AMSAT Fox cubesats for student expts + Online software-defined radios

The latest episode of the HAMRADIONOW.tv program discussed the Fox Project at AMSAT-NA, which aims to build a “family of CubeSats with amateur radio transponders that can support advanced science experiments” for students : HamRadioNow – Episode 85: AMSAT Fox-1

Getting a launch date for a new satellite – even a date more than a year out – is exciting at AMSAT. In this episode, we talk to a pair of AMSAT VP’s. Tony Montiero AA2TX handles Engineering, and Mark Hammond N8MH does Education. We talk about what Fox-1 will do (an FM crossband repeater that will also relay data from onboard science experiments). And we learn how AMSAT must transition from a bunch of hams who put up satellites that we can talk through, to a provider of the physical platform and communications for educational experiments for school grades K thru Post-Grad…. that also has transponders and repeaters that hams can use.

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The site websdr.org provides a long list of online SDR (Software-Defined Radio) sites:

A WebSDR is a Software-Defined Radio receiver connected to the internet, allowing many listeners to listen and tune it simultaneously. SDR technology makes it possible that all listeners tune independently, and thus listen to different signals; this is in contrast to the many classical receivers that are already available via the internet.

For example, the following site tracks several satellites and the ISS and has a “sat” setting for tuning them in: VHF/UHF WebSDR on University of Technology Eindhoven – Maxwell Foundation (Note the site requests permission to run a Java program in your browser.)