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Marguerite Schier,12:12PM 9/6/9...,KIDSAT               4 

Schedule and Milestones

June 15 - August 15,1995    SURF students and teachers develop software

Deliverables

The deliverable in this project is a software package that includes three components: science requirements specification, optical instrument design and mission design.

Potential Benefit to the Laboratory

There is currently a significant amount of interest from NASA and the administration in education:

"The fifth major goal of the Global Marshall Plan should be to seek fundamental changes in how we gather information about what is happening to the environment and to organize a worldwide education program to promote a more complete understanding of the crisis. In the process, we should actively search for ways to promote a new way of thinking about the current relationship between human civilization and the earth." Al Gore, 1992. The Earth in Balance

"Make the space station user-friendly for children and recommend an educational program and we will do the appropriate things so that we touch millions of children around the world." Dan Goldin at Science Educators Convention, April 1994.

There has also been a fair amount of discussion about science education; however, it is mostly philosophy. KidSat offers JPL and NASA a real education initiative that could potentially reach a very large number of students throughout the United States and around the world. The unique collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth and the CalSpace Institute should allow us to develop a project that truly changes education. By taking the lead in KidSat, JPL will demonstrate its serious commitment to education. By starting with a design software package for kids that is itself developed by a team of scientists, engineers, teachers and students, JPL will demonstrate its commitment that KidSat belongs to kids.

Previous DDF Funding

In FY94, KidSat received $15K of DDF funds which supported SURF students to assess the feasibility of KidSat. Several existing camera and instrument systems were considered as potential KidSat instruments. The results of the study identified two key features for KidSat: high resolution and telepresence (joy stick) capabilities. Their study recommended existing film and video cameras be flown on the Shuttle and Mir, but that the full telepresence capability for KidSat would have to wait for the Space Station (with early test flights on the Shuttle). The students came up with a creative concept to allow many students "fly" simultaneously by collecting a full +/-45o FOV data set and allowing kids to "fly" in real time within that data set with a 15o FOV.
 The results of that study are bing integrated on a Mosaic Home Page.

Responsibilities

Printed for sride@ucsd.edu (Sally K. Ride)             4