1. THE ONLY WAY IS UP!
GROUND CONTROL TO IRISH TRANSITION YEAR STUDENTS
2. ABOUT THE COMPETITION
• Is the first of its kind in Ireland
• Allowing a project designed by Irish students
to spend 30 days orbiting the Earth.
• The winning experiment will fly to the
International Space Station (ISS) on board a
launch vehicle.
3. HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME TO IRELAND
Dr Norah Patten – University of Limerick
Involved in a number of space project
initiatives in ireland and
internationally .
Visited the NASA in 2012
5. Their goal is to facilitate real space
missions and opportunities for second
level student and aim to provide
everything needed to get your
research and discovery mission
underway on the ISS
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_390.html
6. Customers use them
directly or through
educational partners.
Customers and partners
include:
School Districts
Universities
Community Colleges
Technical Schools
NCESSE (National
Center for Earth and
Space Science
Education)
NASA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/8190337497/sizes/l/in/photostream/
7. MixStix will be
used for the
experiments.
Substances
(ones deemed
safe) are
packed into
clear silicon
tubes with
clamps.
They are easily
activated by
8. Mixture Tubes/MixStix
Hold up to 3 substances
Substances can be fluid, gas,
solid/powder
Holds 10 milliliters volume in total
Refrigeration is allowed
Students create a “flight unit” and a
“control unit”
Tube will be returned to the students
for analysis
9. Some examples of past
experiments are observations
of substances, elements, or
plants in microgravity as well
as more sophisticated
procedures such as a
biological growth and study of
antibiotic resistance.
12. WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO NOW!
What comes next:
Work in teams of 4/5 students
Submit an Abstract:
norah.patten@ul.ie
before December 20th 2013
13. THE ONLY WAY IS UP
What to put into the ‘abstract’?
Team Name & Name of Experiment.
250 word paragraph to describe your
experiment.
What is it about?
What materials/substances are
involved?
What do you hope to investigate?
Why is this important to
investigate?
Submit to
norah.patten@ul.ie
By the December 20 th
14. THE ONLY WAY IS UP: GUIDELINES FOR
EXPERIMENTS
•
Must meet NanoRacks rules
• Avoid permanent magnets
• Avoid pressure vessels (make sure
your contents wont expand so much
they break the tube)
• Avoid substances with toxicity higher
than 2 on Materials Safety Data
Sheets (MSDS’s)
15. FIELDS OF MICRO-GRAVITY EXPERIMENTS
CONDUCTED BY NANORACKS
Pharmaceutical
Silicone Crystal growth
Material science
Microbiology
Biotechnology
Physic laws
Magnetic field research
Combustion
Plasma research
Small animal research
In space component testing
16. WHY TO GO TO SPACE?
• Physical and Biological processes are
different in microgravity.
• Uniqueness of microgravity
environment can enable new
commercial products to be developed.
Perhaps develop technologies required for the
permanent occupation of space??
18. NanoRacks Platform-1 and NR-2
What would you
Two research platformsup ?
dream developed and
funded by NanoRacks in just six months;
16 payload slots in the CubeSat form
factor of 10 cm by 10 cm by 10 cm
USB standard interface
Allows the ultimate plug-and-play for
for payloads—customers includes
students
and researchers
Permanent addition to U.S. National Lab
on Space Station.
19. WINNER FROM THE SCHOOL
• Once the Abstracts have been have been
submitted a winning team will be selected.
• The winning team from the school will have
an opportunity to present their experiment to
a panel of judges in the University of
Limerick.
• From this judging panel the winner of the
competition will be selected
20. THE ONLY WAY IS UP: SPONSORS
Thank you
Questions ?
Notes de l'éditeur
it is a low earth orbit space station mean it is close to earth.
It orbits the earth every 90mins.
My colleague Dr Norah Patten is the main driver behind this project. She has been involved in a number of space project initiatives over her careers. She has even been to Cape Canaveral to see NASA.
Can see the size of the modern day launch vehicles .
Launch centre – this is what you see on movies – this is the launch centre that takes care of the launches and will be in control of the winning teams experiment.
The company responsible in bring this opportunity to you is an American company. In operation for a couple of years.
Agreement with NASA to allow them to use research facility at space station.
They developed the first commercial classroom in terms of student developing research for space.
What are they all about
Allow for access to space.
Work with school districts and universities and they are obviously partners with NASA to carry out space experiments.
Mixture Tubes; Here we see examples of what a MixStix actually looks like. Up to three different substances can be places in the tube and are mixed in space. The tube will spend 30 days on the space station and will be returned to earth for examination
1.8 milliliters is the minimum size on any side of the tube
Clamps take up 0.8 milliliters
Close with a pressure fit
Loads of different types of experiment that can fly.
Some examples of things that have flown in the past.
So what happens? Here you see the process of the students preparing the experiment all the way to it going into space. It will be launched on a rocket, either from Florida or Russia and will travel to the ISS where the astronaut will ‘activate’ the experiment by breaking the tubes. This allows the two components/substances to mix together
Neodymium magnets =permanent magnets
Eproxy
This is an excellent website to gain an idea of what has flown before. There are several examples of experiments that have flown. Highly recommend you have a look at this website for some ideas of what has been flown previously