Viewing page 23 of 208

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

1.10 KidSat Logo

The name "KidSat" was made up by an adult. One of the first things students said about KidSat was that the name must be changed. The reasons were good: young people are not kids; KidSat is not a satellite, it flies on the shuttle; it is not an SAT test; and "we are not kidding." The renaming process started when a high school student, who was working on the project team, organized a logo and renaming contest. Lisa Min, from La Cañada High School, came up with a brochure inviting students to submit a name and a logo. The brochure included information on the names of other NASA missions, like Galileo, named after the scientist who discovered the Jovian moons; Magellan, named after the explorer who circled the Earth; Ulysses, named after the Greek mariner who went in search of uncharted tomorrows; and the shuttles Columbia, Challenger, Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavor, all named after explorers' ships. Lisa received many suggestions from the middle school students in Charleston, Pasadena, and San Diego. She enlisted the help of several students from different KidSat teams and worked with two artists from France, Sally Holt and Jean-Max Albert to develop the final logo. The group got together, selected elements from many of the middle school students' logo designs and naming ideas, and came up with one integrated proposal. One key idea was to make the letter Y into a shuttle, and the letters E and S into land and water forms. The results was project YES-- Youth Enhancing Space. The keyword was "enhancing" which was just what students were doing for the space program. The resulting logo was used for STS-76 and a decal with the logo was flown on the shuttle for each school and student team.

However, there was concern that too many other projects were named YES and that more students should be involved in the logo contest. Based on recommendations from NASA Headquarters, KidSat would keep its names and YES logo would be combined by the graphics department at JPL, with a logo made by UCSD students. The result was the KidSat logo that flew on both STS-81 and STS-86. The interest generated by the process of creating a logo prompted educators to include in the curriculum the activity of making a logo for, and naming, each school's SMOC.

[[image]]
Figure 7: KidSat/Youth Enhancing Space logo used for STS-76

[[image]]
Figure 8: KidSat logo used for STS-81 and STS-86