This page last updated: June 27, 2011
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E.1. Education and Outreach
The educational and public outreach (EPO) efforts will use the energy and enthusiasm of the HESSI Team and the unique aspects of the HESSI mission to excite and educate students, teachers, and the public with this science and technology. Our goals are to provide high-quality research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students, to help teachers provide scientific and technological education to pre-college students, and to contribute toward a technologically and scientifically literate public. We will leverage our limited resources by taking advantage of well-established outreach efforts at UCB and GSFC that use partnerships with science museums and neighboring school districts in disadvantaged urban areas to reach the general public, pre-college students, and teachers. The UCB and GSFC education and outreach efforts will be coordinated by key personnel to ensure the development of complementary materials that can be disseminated through existing structures at both institutions. As the premier mission in high-energy solar physics, using state-of-the-art techniques for imaging spectroscopy, HESSI will offer outstanding research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students during all project phases. For the general public and the pre-college community, HESSI will provide exciting and easily appreciated color X-ray movies of solar flares. Such movies will provide spectacular coverage of the biggest events that trigger significant terrestrial effects such as the northern lights, communication blackouts, and power outages. Our educational and public outreach efforts will support teams of teachers, science museum educators, and scientists in the design of classroom materials derived from technological development and scientific research.
UCB’s educational and public outreach efforts will involve graduate and undergraduate students, high school teachers and their students, and the public. At least six undergraduate students and five graduate students will be actively engaged in HESSI research. Also, student employees will staff the HESSI MOC/SOC at UCB. The pre-college program at UCB will be modeled after the highly successful efforts of the EUVE NASA satellite and FAST missions. Dr. Isabel Hawkins from UCB/Center for EUV Astrophysics will lead the UCB EPO. The K-12 program will include in-depth training of a core of lead-teachers from grades 6-12, who work in disadvantaged urban school districts in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland). Our collaboration will include Lawrence Muilenburg, a middle school teacher in Walnut Creek; Nellie Levine, Jennifer Fong, and Laurel Rietman from San Francisco public high schools; and Marlene Wilson, Timothy Keys and Emannel Onyeador of Oakland public schools. These lead-teachers will participate in summer internships at SSL as members of a team that will include museum educators and scientists, working together to develop classroom materials and activities based on HESSI science and engineering. They will then train other teachers in the use of these materials. The UCB EPO effort will be evaluated by the participation of a graduate student from the UCB School of Education, the Education, Math, Science and Technology Division. The UCB effort will build upon a national partnership of science museums established through the Science Education Gateway (SEGWay) program, led by UCB CEA and funded by NASA's High Performance Computing and Communications. The existing national coalitions will provide an effective multiplier of the local HESSI-based education efforts at UCB and at GSFC. The classroom materials developed by teams will be presented on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROMs. They will serve as the basis for training the hundreds of teachers who participate in workshops at each of the SEGWay science museums, including Lawrence Hall of Science, Exploratorium, National Air and Space Museum, and Science Museum of Virginia. Teachers will then be able to use these resources to build or enhance their own classroom materials.
At GSFC, several undergraduates will work on all phases of HESSI each summer, and at least one graduate student will pursue a Ph.D. dissertation with HESSI science. The undergraduate research will be augmented with NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) funding. This program is in its eighth year with Dr. Crannell as PI and the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics as an NSF/REU Site. For the pre-college efforts, the principal targeted population is middle-school teachers and students, where the pipeline problem is most acute. By providing middle school teachers with material and support that they can use to excite their students about mathematics-related disciplines, we can increase the number of students who elect to stay in the math and science track as they approach high school. Part of this effort will be modeled after our ongoing summer teacher program at GSFC, in which we have two or more teachers working with scientists in the Solar Physics Branch for eight weeks each summer on projects such as grid characterization and analysis of solar data. The teachers will develop educational materials motivated by HESSI science and technology. The scientists and engineers will stay involved with the teachers through visits to their classrooms, guest lectures, and a continuing flow of HESSI information. We have formed partnerships with Harford County Public Schools, Montgomery College Planetarium, and the Maryland Science Center. The points of contact in Harford County are the Southampton Middle School Planetarium and the Aberdeen High School Planetarium, serving 37,000 students in grades K-12. The planetarium teachers have pioneered the development of activity-based classes for middle school students using their planetaria and science data on the WWW as part of the core curriculum with 3000 students and 200 teachers in Southampton and Aberdeen Middle Schools. The Montgomery College Planetarium serves more than 3000 students in grades K through 14 each year with hands-on activities, as well as providing planetarium shows for the general public. The college also sponsors two three-week workshops for 20 high-school and middle-school science teachers per workshop, each summer. One of these workshops will draw on teachers throughout the state of Maryland and the other, on the District of Columbia, a seriously underserved area. These teachers, in turn, will reach a total of 6000 or more students each year. The workshops will provide another forum in which teachers, in partnership with HESSI scientists and engineers, will develop educational materials such as lesson plans, demonstrations, and interactive learning activities. The Maryland Science Center brings informal science education to people of all ages, with a rich variety of program options for sharing HESSI technology and scientific results with students, teachers, and the public, within the context of the following programs: Camp-In, Career Day, Governor's Academy, Teacher Camp-In, and Exhibit Hall Explainers. Implementing these programs around the time of launch and during intervals of particularly great solar activity will focus attention on the Sun and our understanding of its dynamics. The HESSI team will provide the Maryland Science Center with materials, artifacts, and volunteers to implement these programs. Examples of HESSI materials already in progress include the color movie on HESSI's hard X-ray imaging technology being developed at Caltech, and a lecture demonstration by Co-I van Beek, Delft, on micro-machining and kinematic mounts, motivated by our grid technology. We will cooperate with established sources, such as the GSFC Teachers Resource Center, Spacelink operated by MSFC, and various solar home pages, to assure that materials are distributed as widely as possible.
Spectrum participates in a number of community outreach programs involving local schools, disadvantaged children, trade shows, seminars, conferences, trade papers, and magazines. Information in support of NASA programs and technologies is also disseminated on our web page. We continue to experiment with novel approaches to educational outreach. For example, in 1996 Spectrum sponsored Ross Tucker, an outstanding twelve-year-old student, to attend the launch of the NASA/JPL Mars Pathfinder Spacecraft. As part of this sponsorship, Ross agreed to write an essay on the Mars Pathfinder mission and his launch experience and to make presentations to students at local schools. With the help of Spectrum personnel, Ross put together an excellent presentation and is now visiting schools in the Phoenix area encouraging other young people to share his interest in space science. We will work with UCB during the course of the program to jointly assess and evaluate beneficial outreach strategies. These strategies will promote public understanding of the objectives and benefits of the HESSI program in specific, and the exploration of space in general.
Several technology items have already been developed for HESSI (with NASA funding, of course). They include: (1) fine grids made from high-Z materials by foil stacking with grid thickness to slat width ratio of ~50:1; (2) segmented and grounded guard-ring coaxial GeDs; (3) advanced FETs; (4) transistor-reset CSAs, (5) low-cost, high-capacity cryocoolers. No further technological developments are required for the HESSI mission. Technology items already developed for HESSI have significant potential for transfer to other NASA missions, the federal government, and the private sector. The transistor-reset CSA circuitry is presently offered by all the major GeD manufacturers in their premium (extra cost) electronic systems. We are considering an offer by a commercial firm (Amptek) to hybridize our CSAs for HESSI in exchange for marketing rights. The advanced FETs are baselined for the European Space Agency INTEGRAL (INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) mission as part of NASA’s involvement. The UCB segmented GeD technology will be transferred to ORTEC since they can provide GeDs on our schedule. Potential fine grid applications (many have been discussed with commercial entities) include X-ray imaging for high volume baggage inspection, characterization of heavy metal deposits, radioactive waste assessment, medical imaging, comb drive actuators and a micro mass spectrometer. The Sunpower cryocooler has been baselined for many ground applications as well as a number of sub-orbital and other space experiments.
E.3. Small And Small Disadvantaged Business Contracting
The HESSI team will easily meet the 8% SB and SDB requirements for a SMEX Program. At UCB, we use the Minority and Women Business Enterprise Directory maintained by the UCB Office of Minority Business Development in selecting subcontractors. In the SMEX FAST project, for example, we assisted an SDB contractor (M-B Systems) to develop the circuit board assembly capability to NASA standards, including ESD control and NHB5300.4 certification thoughout. At GSFC, center management is very committed to SB and SDB development and maintains an aggressive policy of offering mainstream scientific and technical development opportunities to SBs and SDBs. This enhances their base capabilities and competitive posture for acquiring future related work. GSFC flows down SB and SDB goals of at least 8% each to all contracts with non-SBs in excess of $500k. The spacecraft provider, Spectrum Astro, is classified as both a small business and Small Disadvantaged Business. At approximately 200 current employees, it will probably remain in the small business category for the duration of the HESSI period of performance. Spectrum’s Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code is 3761. It is a women-owned business with 52% of the company stock controlled by women. Ms. Martha S. Martin is the Chief Executive Officer and Ms. Patricia M. Oleson is both Vice President of Contracts & Finance and Chief Financial Officer. The combination of small and women-owned business classifications meet the requirements of NASA’s SDB program. Since the spacecraft alone represents approximately 21% of the total budget, HESSI will comfortably exceed the SB and SDB goals. |
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This page last updated: June 27, 2011
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