Out-of-this-World Experience for Middle School Students

With the successful launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour Thursday evening (Jan. 22) for its docking and transfer mission, it carries into space a camera that takes pictures of unique geographical areas on Earth. On Earth, 7th and 8th graders will activate the camera and focus on these special areas to learn more about them.

EarthKam Web sites Track each school’s EarthKam activies on their Web sites. Spring Harbor Velma Hamilton

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Only two Midwest schools, Madison middle schools Velma Hamilton and Spring Harbor, are taking part in this EarthKAM mission. EarthKAM stands for Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle schools. Scientist Sanjay Limaye and Outreach Coordinator Rosalyn Pertzborn of UW–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center are shepherding schools from setup through completion of the STS-89 EarthKAM flight. James Kotoski, a seventh-grade science teacher at Spring Harbor is the lead teacher; Julie DeWitt, Learning Coordinator at Hamilton, works with the students at her school.

Earlier in January, student participants simulated four orbits of a shuttle flight. Sanjay Limaye explained, “We pretended that the shuttle was in orbit, viewed Web pages, and exchanged information between the Student Mission Operations Centers (SMOCs) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where the project is managed. We performed other tasks we will perform during the flight.”

For their target observations, Hamilton and Spring Harbor students will focus on the impact of human activity on the Amazon Rain Forest. Hamilton middle school students will also look at active volcanoes, particularly Soufriere Hills in Montserrat.

Providing the technology boost for Madison’s participants is TDS Telecom, a national telecommunications company based in Madison. Joe Keyes, in TDS’ government regulatory affairs office, said, “This is a nice win-win project for everybody. It’s a nice blending of our subsidiaries’ capabilities, in that TDS Metrocom provided telephone lines and TDSNet gave Internet access.”

EarthKAM was started as KidSat by the first U.S. woman astronaut, Sally Ride, now a Physics professor at UCSD. EarthKAM observations are integrated into school curriculums in earth sciences with activities in math, science, oral and written communication, research, computer use, and team work activities.

EarthKAM is funded by NASA and is a collaboration of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth (IAAY), and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which also funds global mosaics of satellite imagery created by SSEC. Madison’s Evjue Foundation partially supports EarthKAM and other outreach efforts at SSEC, and NOAA scientists at SSEC are helping students with their Amazon research.

Madison schools’ EarthKAM activities can be tracked over the Internet at these Web sites: Spring Harbor: http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/stugeon/kidsat.htm Velma Hamilton: http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/hamilton/earthkam.htm