Challenger Center inspires love of space exploration

From NWIT Times:  Challenger Center inspires love of space exploration

Challenger Learning Center students explore outer space while still on Earth but thanks to that experience, many start setting their sights to the stars.
The science education center, on Hammond Purdue University Calumet campus, uses space as the hook to get kids interested in career skills related to science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.
It does 95 percent of its work during school based field trips, but also features public programs such as Family Science Night and summer camps, said Becky Manis, the center’s executive director.
New this school year is "Moon Based Explorers", which was developed for students in kindergarten through second grade.
“It’s all part of a simulation where they pretend they are astronauts and use their skills,” Manis said. “It’s Next Generation Standards based. It also meets the Common Core Standards for language and math.”
Kindergartners at Elliott Elementary School in Munster took advantage of the new program.
“They love all the hands-on experiments that help them understand what would be needed to live away from Earth,” said Julie Glavin, a kindergarten through fifth grade science teacher at the school. “They really enjoy putting on their space suits and ‘going to the moon.’ ”
Elliott students have been taking field trips to the center since its inception and currently its kindergartners, third- and fifth- graders visit.
“Its activities provide, inform and enhance the school’s science curriculum,” Glavin said. “Most importantly, the Challenger Center is very complimentary to the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) initiative that is becoming integral in instructing 21st century learners.”
Karey Shanks, who currently teaches second grade at Elliott, said she always enjoyed visiting the Challenger Center when she taught fifth grade.
“This experience provided an event that was memorable,” she said. “Even years after the students left Elliott School, they remembered their Challenger Center experiences.”
The Challenger Center helped her students gain confidence, she said, because it gave them grown-up achievements.
“They really felt like astronauts and did not want to let their team members down,” she said of the life-like experience. It inspired her students to aspire to be astronauts or scientists.
“Lights, sirens, computers, robotic arms, controlled radiation chambers, medical tests, smoke, what was not to love?” she said. The students loved every part of it from the chamber where they entered the space station to problem solving in mission control to debriefing and speaking with astronaut Jerry Ross.
Shanks said the experience was so real that many of her students truly believed they discovered a new object in space, and she was honored when they often chose to name it after her.
The center staff hopes to reach more future scientists with a new underwater astronaut training camp, which they hope to launch as a summer camp, Manis said. Working with SCUBA instructors, camp attendees will mimic the astronauts’ work in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and practice tasks in the pool.
Another plan for the summer is an intergenerational camp that will bring together grandparents and their grandkids.
Summer camp registration typically begins in March and sessions fill up quickly.
“Our center is not just about space but it’s about the science and engineering and math. It’s about work force ready skills. If you think about our future, how much knowledge citizens will need to be productive and strengthen the U.S. We have such a heavy future ahead of us and we need to prepare our kids for the future. Our programs do that. They inspire kids by using space as the hook.”
Manis said the programs are highly educational with a lot of content built into them so teachers can match many standards.
“It should make it easy for teachers to prove that the field trips they take here are worthwhile.”
For more information on the center, call 219-989-3250 or visit www.clcnwi.com.

 

OMG!

Never realized I hadn't posted in over 2 weeks!

Sorry, folks

Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.

Herschel: The Asteroid Apophis More Massive Than Thought

From Sci-News:  Herschel: Asteroid Apophis More Massive Than Thought

New observations of the asteroid Apophis made with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory as it approached our planet few days ago show the asteroid to be bigger than first thought.

Herschel’s view of the asteroid Apophis at wavelengths 70, 100 and 160 microns (ESA / Herschel / PACS / MACH-11 / MPE / B.Altieri / ESAC / C. Kiss / Konkoly Observatory)

Apophis (known as 99942 and 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid discovered on June 19, 2004 by R. A. Tucker, D. J. Tholen and F. Bernardi at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
ESA’s Herschel observed the asteroid on January 5-6, 2013 during about 2 hours on its approach to Earth at about 14.5 million km.
“As well as the data being scientifically important in their own right, understanding key properties of asteroids will provide vital details for missions that might eventually visit potentially hazardous objects,” said Dr Laurence O’Rourke of the European Space Astronomy Center in Spain.
Herschel provided the first thermal infrared observations of Apophis at different wavelengths, which together with optical measurements helped refine estimates of the asteroid’s properties.
Previous estimates bracketed the asteroid’s average diameter at 270 ± 60 m; the new observations returned a more precise diameter of 325 ± 15 m.
“The 20% increase in diameter, from 270 to 325 m, translates into a 75% increase in our estimates of the asteroid’s volume or mass,” explained Dr Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who led the analysis of the new Herschel data.
By analyzing the heat emitted by Apophis, Herschel also provided a new estimate of the asteroid’s albedo of 0.23. This value means that 23% of the sunlight falling onto the asteroid is reflected; the rest is absorbed and heats up the asteroid. The previous albedo estimate for Apophis was 0.33.
“These numbers are first estimates based on the Herschel measurements alone, and other ongoing ground-based campaigns might produce additional pieces of information which will allow us to improve our results,” Dr Müller said.
“Although Apophis initially caught public interest as a possible Earth impactor, which is now considered highly improbable for the foreseeable future, it is of considerable interest in its own right, and as an example of the class of Near Earth Objects,” said Dr Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel Project Scientist. “Our unique Herschel measurements play a key role for the physical characterization of Apophis, and will improve the long-term prediction of its orbit.”

 

Posts resume Thursday

I know I've been saying this periodically but this will be the last time I say it...I'm visiting relatives and although they have Wi fi I don't have a private room to work.

I'll be home Thursaday and will get back into the swing of things then.

Russia to allocate 2.1 trln rubles for space exploration by 2020 - Medvedev

From Russia: Beyond the Healines:  Russia to allocate 2.1 trln rubles for space exploration by 2020 - Medvedev

The Russian space exploration industry will receive 2.1 trillion rubles in funding in 2013-2020, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.

"Historically, our positions in the space exploration field have probably been the strongest in the world, and this should be maintained. Russia has been and will remain a leading space power," Medvedev said at the last government session in 2012 on Thursday.

"The aggregate size of financing is very significant - 2 trillion and 100 billion rubles, including extra-budgetary sources," the premier said.

"Quite a lot of problems" have piled up in the industry, Medvedev said. He recalled that conferences on optimizing the industry's administration and improvement of rocket equipment's quality and reliability were held three times from August to November.

 "The draft government program is aimed at attaining these objectives and ensuring defense capability and security in the development of this country's economy and social sector and further exploration of outer space," he said.

This program would enable Russia to be properly involved in promising joint projects, such as the International Space Station or the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies, he said.

Medvedev also emphasized that, given proper funding, rocket industry enterprises must increase their labor productivity and improve the quality and reliability of its products. "As for reliability, I specifically emphasize this word. This is a key factor now," he said.

The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

From Wired.com:  The Year’s Most Audacious Private Space Exploration Plans

It has been a remarkable and exciting year for commercial spaceflight companies.
Private asteroid mining! Commercial trips to the moon! Mars settlements! We barely had time to catch our breath from the last secret organization announcement when suddenly some other team was cropping up and declaring a bold new adventure in space.
“You had the unveiling of these really audacious business plans that at first blush you would dismiss as impossible,” said journalist and aerospace analyst Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of the space-industry-watching The Space Review. “But when you look at both the technical and financial pedigree of the people backing these systems, you step back and say, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here.’”
Many of these new companies have experts at their helms, founded or run by former NASA engineers and veterans of the spaceflight community. Others showed off their deep entrepreneurial pockets and touted the potential profits to be made in space.
So how did 2012 turn into the year of private space? Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts.
The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars.
Contributing influences to 2012’s commercial space focus include an aimless NASA. Though it saw spectacular successes such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the agency is still wrestling with frozen budgets and a deeply divided Congress that disagrees on its overarching mission. Alongside NASA’s existential crisis was the aftermath of the second dot-com boom, which created a crop of young, sci-fi-crazy tycoons.
“When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, “Their first thought is ‘Cool, now I can have my own space program.’”
Just in case you are having trouble telling the Planetary Resources apart from the Golden Spikes, Wired presents a gallery of the year's most impressive, daring, and wild business plans from commercial companies. We also talked to a small handful of spaceflight experts to get their take on which of the big dreams will pan out and which will burn out.
“I don’t expect them all to succeed, but I don’t expect them all to fail,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies’ ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. “About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you’re crazy. Now people can say, well it’s a little crazy, but considering what’s been done, it might be possible.”

 

Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

From PNJ.com:  Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

Alternative space music for the unveiling of the lunar landing module replica, the National Naval Aviation Museum’s LEM model could eventually take to the air, and complete blueprints to the original space vehicle couldn’t be found.

Space oddity

If you attended the unveiling of the National Naval Aviation Museum’s new replica of the Apollo 17 lunar excursion module last weekend and think you heard a different tune when the curtain went up than the music playing on our website’s video recording of the moment, you’re right.
At the event, 550 guests heard “Telstar,” a recording by the British group The Tornados, which was a hit on U.S. pop charts in 1962. And while the instrumental is certainly stirring, the Pensacola News Journal’s videographer Ron Stallcup decided to dub in music he thinks is more rousing and a better fit.
So those who tuned into pnj.com’s video of the unveiling on Sunday heard the theme from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Neither melody is from 1972, the year that Apollo 17 landed on the moon. Stallcup and the museum could have revived a hit song about space that was actually from 1972: “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time),” composed by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

LEM trivia

Here are some more tidbits about the museum’s new LEM replica, which is 23 feet fall, made of steel and aluminum and weighs 4,500 pounds. For all that bulk, the manufacturer, Digital Design LLC in Phoenix, constructed the life-size model so that while it now rests on the floor of Hangar Bay 1, curators could eventually hang it from the ceiling — perhaps to dramatize the presentation and clear the way for another exhibit.
Another bit of LEM trivia, the museum’s replica, even though it’s made to sell at retail price of $180,000, is a bargain compared with the ones made for NASA’s Apollo program by Grumman. Those cost about $17 million apiece. Of course they were working space vehicles, while the museum’s replica is an empty shell.

Winging it

Grumman didn’t save complete blueprints of the original LEMs, according to Jaime Johnston, general manager of Digital Design. He said his company’s engineers and designers had to visit museums that contain four of the surviving real LEMs, none of which went into space, to make accurate drawings on which to base their replica.
Johnston said that if Grumman wanted to build another real-life LEM today, “They would have to grab one of the existing ones and take it apart.”