NASA Selects High Schools to Compete in New Challenge

Winning Software Designs Will Program Satellites on the International Space Station

SPHERES are bowling ball-sized spherical satellites used to test maneuvers for spacecraft performing autonomous rendezvous and docking. Three of these satellites fly inside the station's cabin. Each is self-contained with power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment. WASHINGTON -- NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., have selected 24 high schools to participate in a new science, technology, engineering, and math education program. The teams will design software to program small satellites aboard the International Space Station.  

The Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, and Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, are three volley ball-sized spherical satellites that fly inside the space station’s cabin to test advanced maneuvers for spacecraft, like formation flying and autonomous rendezvous and docking. Each contains its own power, propulsion, computing, and navigation equipment.

The selections are part of the Zero-Robotics investigation, which is run by MIT and designed to inspire future scientists and engineers. Students write their own algorithms to solve a problem important to future missions. This year’s pilot program, "HelioSPHERES," allows selected high schools to compete against each other and helps students build critical engineering skills, such as problem solving, design thought process, operations training, teamwork and presentation skills.

The competition was open to all accredited high schools in the United States and attracted 48 applications. The 24 high schools are from 19 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington.
Complete 2010 School list

Mesa Acad. for Advanced Studies/Mesa School District	AZ
Bellarmine College Preparatory	CA
Jame Monroe High School Engineering and Design Academy	CA
Warren Tech / Jeffco Schools	CO
John A. Ferguson Sr. High/Miami-Dade County Public Schools	FL
Naples High School	FL
Columbus High School / Muscogee County	GA
Boundary County School District 101	ID
Post Falls High School	ID
Glenbrook North	IL
Northeast Magnet HS USD259	KS
LCA	MA
Tri County Regional Vocational Technical High School	MA
Falmouth High School / Falmouth Maine	ME
Detroit SEMAA	MI
Academy / Omaha	NE
Storming Robots	NJ
Stuyvesant High School	NY
Upper St. Clair School District	PA
Friendswood High School	TX
Cyprus High School/ Granite School District	UT
Charlottesville High School	VA
Prince William County School System	VA
Kamiak High School	WA

The 24 teams will compete in elimination rounds against each other using online simulations and ground-based testing at MIT. The software of the top 10 winners will be sent to the station, and an astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory will program the SPHERES satellites to run the students' tests.

MIT's Space Systems Laboratory developed the SPHERES program to provide the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA and other researchers with a long-term test bed for validating technologies critical to the operation of future satellites, docking missions and satellite autonomous maneuvers.

SPHERES have been used by many organizations, including other government agencies and graduate student research groups, since the program began in 2006. The satellites provide opportunities to test a wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost.

For additional information on NASA and MIT's Zero-Robotics program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/SPHERES-Zero-Robotics.html

For more information on the Zero-Robotics "HelioSPHERES" competition, selection process, and upcoming activities, visit:

http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/

College Students Help Develop Small Satellite with Big Plans

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Satellites are big. They cost a lot of money. At least that's the impression a couple of University of Maryland-College Park students had when they applied for an internship to help construct a satellite instrument with scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. As the pair quickly discovered, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

To their astonishment, the satellite that Saman Kholdebarin and Lida Ramsey helped to develop was literally the size of a football. "I had no idea you could make these satellites so small," Kholdebarin said, recalling his surprise when his Goddard mentors explained the project to him. "I was astounded."

The small satellite, with a big mission, is appropriately named "Firefly." Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the pint-sized satellite will study the most powerful natural particle accelerator on Earth — lightning — when it launches from the Marshall Islands aboard an Air Force Falcon 1E rocket vehicle next year. In particular, Firefly will focus on Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), a little understood phenomenon first discovered by NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in the early 1990s.

Mystery Flashes

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Firefly satellite in orbit still from the animation. Credit: NASA Although no one knows why, it appears these flashes of gamma rays that were once thought to occur only far out in space near black holes or other high-energy cosmic phenomena are somehow linked to lightning.

Using measurements gathered by Firefly's instruments, Goddard scientist Doug Rowland and his collaborators — Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Md., Siena College, located near Albany, N.Y., and the Hawk Institute for Space Studies in Pocomoke City, Md. — hope to answer what causes these high-energy flashes. In particular, they want to find out if lightning triggers them or if they trigger lightning. Could they be responsible for some of the high-energy particles in the Van Allen radiation belts, which damage satellites? Firefly is expected to observe up to 50 lightning strokes per day, and about one large TGF every couple days.

"The fact that they exist at all is amazing," said Rowland, who spearheaded the overall effort. "They shouldn't exist."

The first hurdle to solving the mystery was building the spacecraft and its two experiment packages — all for the budgeted amount of less than one million dollars, which is about 100 times less expensive than what full-sized satellite missions normally cost. With help from about 15 students from the University of Maryland-College Park, Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., and other universities, Rowland and the Firefly team designed and integrated the spacecraft and its instruments. The team expects to ship the completed satellite to the Air Force sometime this fall in preparation for a March 2011 launch. Once deployed in its low-Earth orbit, Firefly will provide at least three months of data, with a goal of up to one year to maximize student involvement in operations and data analysis.

Bittersweet End

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Jennifer Williams and Robert Carroll, Undergraduate Physics Students at Siena College Loudonville, N.Y., work on instrument electronics for the Firefly mission. Work began on Firefly in 2008 shortly after NSF selected the mission concept for support under its CubeSat program, which launches mini satellites as stowaways aboard rockets carrying larger satellites in space, rather than requiring dedicated rocket launches. Firefly represents the second in a series of NSF-sponsored small satellites designed to study Earth's upper atmosphere.

"We really are doing cutting-edge science," said Al Weatherwax, a Siena College professor who partnered with Rowland to win the NSF grant to develop the Firefly mission. "We got the right people and it worked out great. This is the most fun I've had. I'll be sad to see it end. We're already talking about our next bunch of CubeSats."

Under the two-year collaboration, the Hawk Institute for Space Sciences provided the spacecraft, ground station testing, and flight software.

Siena College built a number of spacecraft components, including one of Firefly's two experiment packages, the Very Low Frequency (VLF) receiver/photometer experiment. This experiment combines multiple sensors to measure both VLF radio waves and optical light emitted by lightning. These measurements will corroborate the occurrence of lightning when the spacecraft observes gamma-ray flashes. "As a college, we are able to take advantage of educational discounts," Weatherwax said, explaining how his team accomplished its assignment on a shoestring budget. "Commercial vendors either donated or reduced the price of key components."

And the Goddard team built Firefly's Gamma-Ray Detector (GRD) instrument, which will measure the energy and arrival times of incoming X-ray and gamma-ray photons associated with TGFs. Although Goddard scientist Joanne Hill designed the instrument, she assigned Ramsey and Kholdebarin the task of designing, building, and testing the instrument's power supply board, a component that monitors voltage levels that run the detector. David Guzman, a Ph.D. student from the Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, meanwhile, was tasked with applying his knowledge of computer microprocessors to possibly enhance the instrument's performance.

Experience: A Confidence Builder

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An image of what Firefly will be studying in the coming months. Credit: stock.xchnge The experience was a memorable one for the trio. Both Ramsey and Kholdebarin agreed that their electrical-engineering classes taught them the basics of circuit electronics, but they learned through trial and error that it takes more than textbook knowledge to build a satellite component. Under certain applications, one circuit might work better with another, Kholdebarin discovered.

"After doing this, I've become more confident," Ramsey added. "I can figure out anything after this. That's the best experience. You really can do a lot more than you think you're capable of."

As for Guzman, who worked for the European Space Agency before beginning his graduate studies a few years ago, the project has revealed this much: "I hope to do a CubeSat in Spain some day."

NASA and OPTIMUS PRIME Collaborate to Educate Youth

New Video Contest To Raise Awareness Of NASA Technology

OPTIMUS PRIME image courtesy Hasbro. NASA has developed a contest to raise students' awareness of technology transfer efforts and how NASA technologies contribute to our everyday lives.

NASA is collaborating with Hasbro using the correlation between the popular TRANSFORMERS brand, featuring its leader OPTIMUS PRIME, and spinoffs from NASA technologies created for aeronautics and space missions that are used here on Earth. The goal is to help students understand that NASA technology 'transforms' into things that are used daily. These 'transformed' technologies include water purifiers, medical imaging software, or fabric that protects against UV rays.

The Innovative Partnerships Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in conjunction with NASA's Office of Education, has designed a video contest for students from third to eighth grade. Each student, or group of students, will submit a three- to five-minute video on a selected NASA spinoff technology listed in the 2009 Spinoff publication. Videos must demonstrate an understanding of the NASA spinoff technology and the associated NASA mission, as well as the commercial application and public benefit associated with the “transformed” technology. Video entries are due by December 31.

The videos will be posted on the NASA YouTube channel, and the public will be responsible for the first round of judging. The top five submissions from each of the two grade groups (third-fifth and sixth-eighth) will advance for final judging. A NASA panel will select a winning entry from each group, and the students will receive a glass OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award at the Space Foundation's National Space Symposium in 2011. The innovators of the NASA technology highlighted in the winning videos also will receive trophies, along with their commercial partners.