September 23, 1997
MEDIA ADVISORY
EVENT:
Third and Final Flight in KidSat Pilot Program
DATE/TIME:
10 a.m.-12 noon, Sept. 26, 1997
10 a.m.-12 noon, Oct. 3, 1997
LOCATION:
Science Engineering Research Facility
Third Floor
University of California, San Diego
BACKGROUND:
The Space Shuttle Atlantis, scheduled for launch on the STS-86 mission on Sept. 25, will support the third and final flight of KidSat (short for Kid's Satellite program), NASA's pilot education program that uses an electronic still camera aboard the Shuttle to bring the frontiers of space exploration to a growing number of U.S. middle school classrooms via the Internet. The three-year pilot program is a partnership between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); the University of California, San Diego (UCSD); and the Johns Hopkins University Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth (JHU-IAAY).
The mission of KidSat is to understand and demonstrate how middle school students can actively make observations of the Earth by using mounted cameras onboard the Space Shuttle to conduct scientific inquiry in support of their middle school curricula. Students engage in a process to select and analyze images of the Earth during Shuttle flights and use the tools of modern science (computers, data analysis tools and the Internet) to widely disseminate the images and results.
These students remotely operate a Kodak electronic still camera, mounted in the right overhead window on the flight-deck of the Space Shuttle, to take digital photographs of the Earth. Middle school students are responsible for planning the photo results, which involves calculating the longitude and latitude of a region, as well as the exact time the Shuttle flies over it. High school and university students then compile the requests into a single control file that is forwarded by KidSat representatives at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston to the IBM Thinkpad connected to the camera.
During the Shuttle mission, the KidSat mission operations center at UCSD is staffed by undergraduate and high school students. The center is modeled after Mission Control at JSC. The students receive telemetry from the Shuttle on their computer monitors and can listen to and receive instructions from NASA's flight controllers over direct channels to JSC.
More than 300 photos were taken during the first KidSat mission in March 1996, and another 500 during the second in January 1997. The photographs are sent to the KidSat data system at JPL and posted on the World Wide Web (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/kidsat/).
Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman astronaut and currently a UCSD physics professor, spearheads the program at UCSD.
The number of schools participating in KidSat has grown from three in the first mission to 15 schools in the second to more than 50 for the upcoming mission. Five San Diego County schools will participate: Bell Junior High School, Challenger Middle School and Lewis Middle School in San Diego; Pierce Middle School in Ramona; and Valley Junior High School in Carlsbad.
The KidSat pilot program is sponsored by NASA's Office of Human Resources and Education, with support from the Offices of Space Flight, Mission to Planet Earth and Space Science.
Media Opportunities:Video, photographs and interviews at KidSat mission operations, including students at the controls, can be arranged.
Media Contact:
Mario Aguilera (619) 534-7572, [email protected]
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