Nebraska Space Grant is Engaged

Omaha – Nebraska Space Grant’s teacher training program continues to impact students and educators across the state. Twelve ambassadors visited Johnson Space Center in February 2016 for additional aerospace education training. The teachers were also able to have dinner with Nebraska’s own astronaut, Clay Anderson. This year the teachers delivered seven workshops at the Nebraska Association of Teachers of Science fall conference, the Space Exploration Educators Conference at Johnson Space Center, and the Nebraska Educational Technology Association’s spring conference. Mike Edmundson, one of the ambassadors, learned of the NASA/NITARP program while at Kennedy Space Center. He shared information about the NASA program with his fellow educator at his high school, Stef Larsen. Subsequently, Ms. Larsen applied and was selected to the NASA/NITARP program where she and three of her high school students had their research published with NASA scientists.

The NASA Nebraska Space Grant supported a student team from UNL to participate in the NASA Micro-G Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design (Micro-G NExT) program. This program was introduced by NASA to advance research and development of equipment used in space exploration. The UNL students were selected to design, build, and test a tool related to material collection from asteroids. Their specific challenge required them to develop a small device that could separate target samples, and to secure small pebbles and rocks that could be floating or loosely adhered to a surface. The device was tested in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab and it proved to be a successful solution to the proposed problem, with its strongest benefits related to design simplicity and ease of use. Students were able to benefit from the hands-on experience designing, building, and testing a device of direct relevance to NASA’s mission. Additionally, students participated in community outreach activities to promote the program, NASA, and the sciences. Finally, students were able to take three credit hours of MECH 498 as engineering elective credit toward their degrees.