In the Education Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we’re always working to bring exciting scientific content to K-12 classrooms. Educators can access many of these free resources, classroom materials and activities online, and we’re adding more all the time. The inspiration for these products often comes from the work being done at JPL and NASA, but sometimes it’s the teachers we work with whose creative ideas inspire the lessons we share with our community of STEM educators. Our new column, Teacher Feature, is an effort to capture those creative ideas and highlight the teachers behind them.
Featured Lesson: How to Read a Heat Map
Students learn to read, interpret and compare “heat maps” representing Earth science data.
LoriAnn Pawlik recently shared her NASA-inspired lesson during a professional development workshop hosted by the agency.
LoriAnn teaches STEM to grades K-5 at Penn Elementary School in Prince William County, Virginia, which focuses on students learning English, as well as those with learning disorders and autism. When she recently came across a lesson on the NASA/JPL Edu website, she saw an opportunity to bring real-world NASA data to her students.
How do you use NASA in the classroom?
Using the lesson “How to Read a Heat Map” as a jumping-off point, LoriAnn had her students first dive into the practice of reading and interpreting graphs. From here, she extended the lesson with an exploration of NASA satellites and the data they collect, focusing on the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment, or GRACE mission, to tie in with a community science night on water science.
GRACE was launched in 2002 to track changes in the distribution of liquid water, ice and land masses on Earth by measuring changes in the planet’s gravity field every 30 days. Circling Earth 16 times each day, GRACE spent more than 15 years collecting data – all of which is available online – before its science mission ended last October. The mission provided students the perfect context to study climate and water through authentic NASA data.
How did students react to the lesson?
LoriAnn set the stage for her students by explaining to them that they would be providing their data to NASA scientists.
“I told them that I was working on a project for a scientist from NASA-JPL and that we needed their help,” she said via email. “By the time I gave them the background and showed a brief GRACE video, they were all in – excited, eager enthusiastic! It helped that each table, or ‘engineering group,’ was responsible for a different U.S. state.”
As a result, students were able to plot the changes in gravitational fields for multiple locations over several years.
What are other ways you use NASA lessons or resources?
By extending the lesson, LoriAnn gave her students a sense of authentic ownership of the data and practice in real scientific analysis. But it wasn’t her first time uniting NASA science with her school curriculum:
“I'd been working with our second-graders on field studies of habitats,” LoriAnn explained. “We observed, journaled and tracked the migration of monarch butterflies, discussed what happened to habitats of living things since Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma were just going through, and then I used the [NASA Mars Exploration website] to have students extend the findings to space habitats.”
Have a great idea for implementing NASA research in your class or looking to bring NASA science into your classroom? The Educator Professional Development Collaborative, or EPDC, can help. The EPDC at JPL serves educators in the greater Los Angeles area. Contact JPL education specialist Brandon Rodriguez at firstname.lastname@example.org. Note: Due to the popularity of EPDC programs, JPL may not be able to fulfill all requests.
Outside the Southern California area? The EPDC operates in all 50 states. Find an EPDC specialist near you.
The EPDC is managed by Texas State University as part of the NASA Office of Education. A free service for K-12 educators nationwide, the EPDC connects educators with the classroom tools and resources they need to foster students’ passion for careers in STEM and produce the next generation of scientists and engineers.
When Halloween rolls around at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we really let our nerd flags fly. Pumpkin carving contests turn into serious engineering design challenges and costume inspiration runs the gamut from real science to science fiction.
This year, join us in all our geekdom with these spooky (and educational!) space activities from the Education Office at NASA/JPL:
In the News
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of the world’s farthest and longest-lived spacecraft, NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2. Four decades ago, they embarked on an ambitious mission to explore the giant outer planets, the two outermost of which had never been visited. And since completing their flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in 1989, they have been journeying toward the farthest reaches of our solar system – where no spacecraft has been before. These two intrepid spacecraft continue to return data to NASA daily, offering a window into the mysterious outer realms of our solar system and beyond.
How They Did It
The Voyager spacecraft were launched during a very short window that took advantage of a unique alignment of the four giant outer planets – one that would not occur again for another 176 years. (Try this lesson in calculating launch windows to get an idea of how it was done.) Launching at this point in time enabled the spacecraft to fly by all four planets in a single journey, returning never-before-seen, close-up images and scientific data from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune that greatly contributed to our current understanding of these planets and the solar system.
Why It’s Important
These images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (clockwise from top) were taken by Voyager 1 and 2 as the spacecraft journeyed through the solar system. See a gallery of images that Voyager took on the Voyager website. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In addition to shaping our understanding of the outer planets, the Voyager spacecraft are helping us learn more about the space beyond the planets – the outer region of our solar system. After completing their “grand tour” of the outer planets, the Voyagers continued on an extended mission to the outer solar system. They are now more than 10 billion miles from Earth, exploring the boundary region between our planetary system and what’s called interstellar space.
The beginning of interstellar space is where the constant flow of material from the Sun and its magnetic field stop influencing the surroundings. Most of the Sun’s influence is contained within the heliosphere, a bubble created by the Sun and limited by forces in interstellar space. (Note that the heliosphere doesn’t actually look like a sphere when it travels through space; it’s more of a blunt sphere with a tail.) The outer edge of the heliosphere, before interstellar space, is a boundary region called the heliopause. The heliopause is the outermost boundary of the solar wind, a stream of electrically charged atoms, composed primarily of ionized hydrogen, that stream outward from the Sun. Our planetary system lies inside the bubble of the heliosphere, bordered by the heliopause and surrounded by interstellar space.
Though we’ve learned a lot about the heliopause thanks to the Voyager spacecraft, its thickness and variation are still key unanswered questions in space physics. As the Voyagers continue their journey, scientists hope to learn more about the location and properties of the heliopause.
From their unique vantage points – Voyager 1 in the northern hemisphere and Voyager 2 in the southern hemisphere – the spacecraft have already detected differences and asymmetries in the solar wind termination shock, where the wind abruptly slows as it approaches the heliopause. For example, Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock at a distance of about 83.7 AU in the southern hemisphere. (One AU, or astronomical unit, is equal to 150 kilometers (93 million miles), the distance between Earth and the Sun.) That’s about 10 AU closer to the Sun than where Voyager 1 crossed the shock in the north. As shown in this diagram, Voyager 1 traveled through the compressed “nose” of the termination shock and Voyager 2 is expected to travel through the flank of the termination shock.
With four remaining powered instruments on Voyager 1 and five remaining powered instruments on Voyager 2, the two spacecraft continue to collect science data comparing their two distinct locations at the far reaches of the solar system.
In August 2012, Voyager 1 detected a dramatic increase in galactic cosmic rays (as shown in this animated chart). The increase, which has continued to the current peak, was associated with the spacecraft's crossing into interstellar space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Since it launched from Earth in 1977, Voyager 1 has been using an instrument to measure high-energy, dangerous particles traveling through space called galactic cosmic rays. While studying the interaction between the bubble of the heliosphere and interstellar space, Voyager 1 revealed that the heliosphere is functioning as a radiation shield, protecting our planetary system from most of these galactic cosmic rays. So in August 2012, when Voyager 1 detected a dramatic increase in the rays, which has continued to the current peak, it was associated with the spacecraft’s crossing into interstellar space.
Meanwhile, Voyager 2 – which is still in the heliosheath, the outermost layer of the heliosphere between the shock and the heliopause – is using its solar wind instrument to measure the directional change of solar wind particles there. Within the next few years, Voyager 2 is also expected to cross into interstellar space, providing us with even more detailed data about this mysterious region.
In another 10 years, we expect one or both Voyagers to cruise outward into a more pristine region of interstellar space, returning data to inform our hypotheses about the concentration of galactic particles and the characteristics of interstellar wind.
Even with 40 years of space flight behind them, the Voyagers are expected to continue returning valuable data until about 2025. Communications will be maintained until the spacecraft’s nuclear power sources can no longer supply enough electrical energy to power critical functions. Until then, there’s still much to learn about the boundary of our heliosphere and what lies beyond in the space between the stars.
Use these standards-aligned lessons and related activities to get students doing math and science with a real-world (and space!) connection.
- Hear Here - Students use the mathematical constant pi and information about the current location of Voyager 1 to learn about the faint data-filled signal being returned to Earth.
- Solar System Bead Activity – Students calculate and construct a scale model of solar system distances using beads and string.
- Catching a Whisper from Space – Students kinesthetically model the mathematics of how NASA communicates with spacecraft.
- Voyager Mission
- Voyager Images
- Voyager Golden Record
- The Sounds of Interstellar Space
- Voyager Senses Sun's Tsunami Wave in Interstellar Medium
- Commemorative Voyager Posters
In the News
The Moon casts a shadow on Earth during a total solar eclipse over Europe in this image taken by a French astronaut on the Mir Space Station. Credit: CNES
This month marks the first time in 38 years that one of nature’s most awe-inspiring sights, a total solar eclipse, will be visible from the continental United States. And unlike the 1979 eclipse, the one on August 21 can be seen from coast to coast – something that hasn’t happened since 1918.
Millions of people are expected to travel to the 14 states that are in the path of totality – where the Moon will completely cover the disk of the Sun – while hundreds of millions more in every other state of the U.S. will be able to see a partial eclipse.
Whether you live in or are traveling to the path of totality, or will be able to step outside and view the partial eclipse from the comfort of your own home or school, the eclipse provides both an inspiring reason to look to the sky and opportunities to engage in scientific observations and discovery.
How it Works
Eclipses occur as the result of an alignment between the Sun, the Moon and Earth. Solar eclipses can only happen during the new moon phase, when the Moon’s orbit brings it between Earth and the Sun. At this time, the shadow cast by the moon could land on Earth, resulting in an eclipse. But most of the time, because the moon’s orbit is slightly titled, the moon’s shadow falls above or below Earth.
The time period when the Moon, Earth and the Sun are lined up and on the same plane is called an eclipse season. Eclipse seasons last about 34 days and occur just shy of every six months. A new moon during an eclipse season will cause the Moon’s shadow to fall on Earth, creating a solar eclipse.
In addition to the proper alignment required for an eclipse, the distance between Earth, the Moon and the Sun also plays an important role. Even though the Moon is much smaller than the Sun (about 400 times smaller in diameter), the Sun and Moon appear about the same size from Earth because the Sun is about 400 times farther away than the Moon. If the Moon were farther from Earth, it would appear smaller and not cover the disk of the Sun. Similarly, if the Sun were closer to Earth, it would appear larger and the Moon would not completely cover it.
Why It’s Important
Total solar eclipses provide a unique opportunity for scientists to study the Sun and Earth from land, air and space, and allow the public to engage in citizen science!
The sun's outer atmosphere (corona) and thin lower atmosphere (chromosphere) can be seen streaming out from the covered disk of the sun during a solar eclipse on March 20, 2015. Credit: S. Habbal, M. Druckmüller and P. Aniol
On a typical day, the bright surface of the Sun, called the photosphere, is the only part of the Sun we can see. During a total solar eclipse, the photosphere is completely blocked by the Moon, leaving the outer atmosphere of the Sun (corona) and the thin lower atmosphere (chromosphere) visible. Studying these regions of the Sun’s atmosphere can help scientists understand solar radiation, why the corona is hotter than the photosphere, and the process by which the Sun sends a steady stream of material and radiation into space.
Scientists measure incoming solar radiation on Earth, also known as insolation, to better understand Earth’s radiation budget – the energy emitted, reflected and absorbed by Earth. Just as clouds block sunlight and reduce insolation, the eclipse will block sunlight, providing a great opportunity to study how increased cloud cover can impact weather and climate. (Learn more about insolation during the 2017 eclipse here.)
Citizen scientists can get involved in collecting data and participating in the scientific process, too, through NASA’s Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment, or GLOBE, program. During the eclipse, citizen scientists in the path of totality and in partial eclipse areas can measure temperature and cloud cover data and report it using the GLOBE Observer app to help further the study of how eclipses affect Earth’s atmosphere.
You can learn more about the many ways scientists are using the eclipse to improve their understanding of Earth, the Moon and the Sun here.
How to View It
Important! Do not look directly at the Sun or view the partial eclipse without certified eclipse glasses or a solar filter. For more information on safe eclipse viewing, visit the NASA Eclipse website.
When following proper safety guidelines, witnessing an eclipse is an unparalleled experience. Many “eclipse chasers” have been known to travel the world to see total eclipses.
The start time of the partial eclipse, when the edge of the Moon first crosses in front of the disk of the Sun, will depend on your location. You can click on your location in this interactive eclipse map to create a pin, which will show you the start and end time for the eclipse in Universal Time. (To convert from Universal Time to your local time, subtract four hours for EDT, five hours for CDT, six hours for MDT, or seven hours for PDT.) Clicking on your location pin will also show you the percent of Sun that will be eclipsed in your area if you’re outside the path of totality.
If you are inside the approximately 70-mile-wide strip known as the path of totality, where the shadow of the Moon, or umbra, will fall on Earth, the total eclipse will be visible starting about an hour to 1.5 hours after the partial eclipse begins.
Only when the eclipse is at totality – and the viewer is in the path of totality – can eclipse glasses be removed. Look at the eclipse for anywhere from a few seconds to more than 2.5 minutes to see the Sun’s corona and chromosphere, as well as the darkened near side of the Moon facing Earth. As before, your viewing location during the eclipse will determine how long you can see the eclipse in totality.
After totality ends, a partial eclipse will continue for an hour to 1.5 hours, ending when the edge of the Moon moves off of the disk of the Sun. Remember, wear eclipse glasses or use a pinhole camera for the entirety of the partial eclipse. Do not directly view the partial eclipse.
To get an idea of what the eclipse will look like from your location and explore the positions of the Moon, Sun and Earth throughout the eclipse, see this interactive simulation.
For more information about the start of the partial eclipse, the start and duration of totality, and the percentage of the Sun eclipsed outside the path of totality, find your location on this interactive eclipse map.
NASA Television will host a live broadcast beginning at 9 a.m. PDT on Aug. 21 showing the path of totality and featuring views from agency research aircraft, high-altitude balloons, satellites and specially-modified telescopes. Find out how and where to watch, here.
Use these standards-aligned lessons and related activities to get your students excited about the eclipse and the science that will be conducted during the eclipse.
- Epic Eclipse – Students use the mathematical constant pi to approximate the area of land covered by the Moon’s shadow during the eclipse.
- Pinhole Camera – Learn how to make your very own pinhole camera to safely see a solar eclipse in action from anywhere the eclipse is visible, partial or full!
- Moon Phases - Students learn about the phases of the Moon by acting them out. In 30 minutes, they will act out one complete, 30-day, Moon cycle.
- NEW! Measuring Solar Energy During an Eclipse – Students use mobile devices to measure the impact a solar eclipse has on the energy received at Earth’s surface.
- NEW! Modeling the Earth-Moon System – Students learn about scale models and distance by creating a classroom-size Earth-Moon system.
- NASA GLOBE Observer – Students can become citizen scientists and collect data for NASA’s GLOBE Program using this app available for iOS and Android devices (eclipse update available starting August 18, 2017).
- NASA TV Eclipse 2017 broadcast info
- NASA 2017 Eclipse website
- NASA Eyes Eclipse 2017 Interactive
- Interactive Eclipse Map
- NASA Eclipse website (for info about other eclipses)
- Eclipse Safety
- American Astronomical Society website (for info on reputable vendors of solar viewers and filters)
- Earth’s Radiation Budget
You may already know about the online lessons and activities available from the Education Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (If not, check them out here.) But did you know that JPL and all NASA centers nationwide have an education specialist focused specifically on professional development for teachers – including how to use those online lessons in the classroom? It’s part of a program called the Educator Professional Development Collaborative, or EPDC, a free service for any K-12 classroom educator in the country.
During the 2016-2017 school year, the EPDC at JPL participated in more than 120 school events focusing on teacher professional development, including implementing Next Generation Science Standards, helping schools initiate science fairs and community events, and assisting with student presentations. That number includes more than 5,000 teachers and students who worked with the EPDC on initiatives designed to get NASA science and engineering into the hands of future space explorers.
As the EPDC coordinator for JPL, I schedule and help shape these events for schools and teacher preparation programs in Southern California, coordinating and consulting with educators to help them bring standards-aligned NASA STEM content into the classroom. My work and the ways in which I support educators can take many shapes. Teachers often ask me to visit during regularly scheduled professional development or early dismissal days. These represent the most common events, wherein schools choose topics or themes to focus on and the time is spent practicing hands-on activities for students. This year, teachers and schools have come up with new and especially creative formats, scheduling onsite tours and workshops at JPL for their teaching staff, or even having NASA scientists dial in to their classrooms to talk with students.
The EPDC helps educators bring NASA STEM content into the classroom through workshops, webinars and more. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One school in particular took its program to another level with the help of the EPDC at JPL by building a grade-wide, multi-week mission to Mars. For their annual cross-curricular project, teachers at the San Fernando Institute for Applied Media in Los Angeles were hoping to create a more expansive offering that incorporated the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS. I met with teachers over several days to suggest activities and strategies that would meet their goal of getting students engaged in space science across numerous subject areas.
Students were tasked to explore the history of space exploration and the pioneers who led the charge. Using NASA lessons like those found on the JPL Education website, the students built conceptual models of Mars missions, including calculating the budget associated with such a trek. They then constructed robotic rovers capable of traversing a simulated Martian surface and the tools needed to interact with the local environment.
But what really set the program apart was its focus on collaboration. The school thought beyond the content of the lesson itself, making NASA badges for each student and having them refer to each other as “doctor.” Students designed their own team name and logo. They also used Web-based apps to capture pictures and videos of their work during each class and posted them online, allowing groups to digitally follow the revisions and lessons learned by their classmates. As a year-end culminating event, students presented their work in front of their classmates, and I was fortunate to be in attendance to celebrate the hard work of the teachers and students.
In Chicago, Burley Elementary staff reached out to me via our distance learning program to revise an existing lesson for an elementary-level special education audience. Working together, the staff and I created a project using JPL’s NGSS-aligned Touchdown lesson to demonstrate the value of the engineering design process, revision and collaboration.
Students at Burley Elementry in Chicago design lunar landers as part of JPL's NGSS-aligned Touchdown lesson. Burley Elementary teachers worked with the EPDC at JPL to modify the lesson for their students. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
At the onset of the project, students were tasked to develop a spacecraft capable of landing astronauts safely on a distant planet. Each day concluded with students testing their designs and documenting the changes they made. Again, student groups captured their revisions digitally, praising others and crediting them for ideas that influenced their work. As a result, student groups learned the value of collaboration over competition.
From the educator’s point of view, the evolution of students’ designs also provided a narrative for assessment: Each student group had three designs constructed along with written and recorded diaries discussing the changes they made. The rubric included analysis of their own trials as well as the peer designs that shaped their future trials, creating in-depth student storyboards.
In both of these cases, the educators’ creativity, expertise and interest in creating novel opportunities for professional development and student engagement helped elevate the quality of the EPDC’s offerings and expand the scope of JPL’s STEM lessons. I’ve since been able to incorporate the ideas and strategies created during these projects into other workshops and lessons, sharing them with an even wider group of educators and classrooms. While not every collaboration between the EPDC and educators need be multi-day endeavors, even when done on a small scale, they can have a big impact.
Looking to bring NASA science into your classroom or need help customizing lessons for your students and staff? The EPDC at JPL serves educators in the greater Los Angeles area. Contact JPL education specialist Brandon Rodriguez at email@example.com. Note: Due to the popularity of EPDC programs, JPL may not be able to fulfill all requests.
Outside the Southern California area? The EPDC operates in all 50 states. To find an EPDC specialist near you, see https://www.txstate-epdc.net/nasa-centers/.
The Educator Professional Development Collaborative (EPDC) is managed by Texas State University as part of the NASA Office of Education. A free service for K-12 educators nationwide, the EPDC connects educators with the classroom tools and resources they need to foster students’ passion for careers in STEM and produce the next generation of scientists and engineers.
When the offer letter arrived from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Kiana Williams could hardly believe it. Thousands of science and engineering students apply each year for internships at the lab known for its dare-anything missions to the planets and beyond. Williams never expected it would be her first internship.
“It actually took me about a week to accept that it was a real offer and that I’d actually be coming to intern at NASA/JPL,” she said.
Mechanical engineering student Kiana Williams grew up near JPL in Southern California, but she never thought to apply for an internship until JPL's Education Office visited her university in Alabama. Now, a first-time intern, she says she realizes, "Oh, I can do this." Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This summer, Williams is joining more than 700 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students for internships at JPL in Pasadena, California. Over 10 weeks, they will design new ways to study stars, investigate icy moons thought to be hospitable to life, and even help choose a landing spot for the next Mars rover.
“I get the opportunity to design an entire space telescope from top to bottom,” said Williams, a senior mechanical engineering student at Tuskegee University in Alabama. “It’s kind of a big task, but at the same time it’s fun, so it makes my day go really quickly.”
One of 10 NASA field centers, JPL is the birthplace of spacecraft and instruments that have explored every planet in the solar system, studied our home planet and looked beyond to discover new worlds. It doesn’t just design and build spacecraft, it also operates them, and collects and studies the science they return.
“It’s the only place in the world where everyone needed to conceive of, design, build, launch and land spacecraft, get the science data and write the papers about that science data are all in one place,” said Matt Golombek, a JPL scientist whose interns over the years have helped choose the landing sites for all five Mars rovers and landers since Pathfinder in 1997.
The lab’s internship programs give students studying everything from aerospace engineering to computer science and chemistry the chance to do research with NASA scientists, build spacecraft, and create new technology for future missions.
With more than 20 active spacecraft plus a to-do list that includes missions to Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa and the asteroid belt, JPL has no shortage of projects ripe for students who are eager for careers in space exploration.
Nirmal Patel says that in addition to the wow-factor of testing parts for a Mars rover, his JPL internship is a chance to meet other engineers and scientists all united in a common goal. "Here, everyone wants to explore. And when you have that common goal, it has a different atmosphere," he said. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“It’s just amazing knowing that what we’re doing now will also be replicated on Mars in a few years,” said Nirmal Patel, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Michigan who is testing parts for the Mars 2020 rover. “It’s surreal almost. I’m still a student but I’m getting to have an impact on this project.”
David Dubois, a three-time intern who studies planetary science at the University of Versailles Saint Quentin near Paris, returned to JPL this summer to continue his research on icy moons around Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune. Using data from the Cassini mission (which will end its nearly 13-year mission at Saturn this September) he is modeling the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan to better understand its chemical environment – and maybe discover if it could support life.
He says that in addition to access to one-of-a-kind data directly from spacecraft, JPL offers the opportunity to explore new fields of science and even career paths, if students are open to it.
“Being open is certainly something that I’ve learned from JPL, not being afraid of tackling different problems in different fields,” said Dubois, who is about to publish his first paper as a lead author based on his research at JPL.
When he's not doing research, David Dubois says he focuses much of his time on outreach, which is one of his other passions. This year, he traveled to India with a friend to visit schools and villages and encourage students there to pursue science. "I like to say that I think anybody is a scientist," he said, "as long as you try to provide an answer to questions around you." Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It’s precisely that exposure to its unique career offerings in science, technology, engineering and math – and a foot in the door – that JPL’s Education Office, which manages the lab’s internship programs, is working to provide to more students.
“Our students are operating right alongside the mentors and participating in the discovery process,” said Adrian Ponce, who manages JPL’s higher education group. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for them, and it’s also a great opportunity for JPL. Our internship programs are designed to bring in students from diverse backgrounds and underrepresented communities who share new ways of thinking and analyzing challenges. Many of them will become the next generation of innovators – and not just at JPL.”
For Williams, who plans to continue toward a master’s degree in design engineering after she graduates in December, her time at JPL is confirmation that she’s on the right path and has the motivation to keep going.
“It makes me feel like school is worth it,” said Williams of her internship experience so far. “All the stress I’m going through at school will be worth it because you can find places that are like JPL, that make your job fun.”
Explore JPL’s summer and year-round internship programs and apply at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/intern
The laboratory’s STEM internship and fellowship programs are managed by the JPL Education Office. Extending the NASA Office of Education’s reach, JPL Education seeks to create the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and space explorers by supporting educators and bringing the excitement of NASA missions and science to learners of all ages.
Marco Dolci did not set out to become a NASA engineer. Instead, like many of Dolci’s pursuits, the career path presented itself on his lifelong quest “to know” – that is, to answer any and every question that crosses his mind. As a boy, his never-ending stampede of questions became too much even for his ever-patient parents, so they presented him with a book, 1001 Questions and Answers on Planet Earth. But rather than satiate his quest for answers, it spurred him to seek more.
Today, Dolci still asks a multitude of questions, but the answers he finds through his own determination and curiosity, which have taken him from studies in linguistics to physics to aerospace engineering to robotics – and across the world, from his hometown of Lodi, Italy to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Dolci first came to the Laboratory in 2013 as part of the JPL Visiting Student Researchers Program, or JVSRP. Having just earned a master’s in physics, Dolci was pursuing a second master’s in aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan when he entered and won a scholarship sponsored by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Scientists and Scholars of North America Foundation. His prize: a paid internship at any North American laboratory. He says JPL was the obvious choice.
“I chose JPL because it’s the best place to work on anything related to space,” said Dolci, adding that he only learned later that the laboratory is located in California, a fact that made it all the more desirable. “I just wanted to come here.”
Dolci spent two months working on concepts and proposals for missions designed to study black holes, protoplanetary discs, X-rays and cosmic rays. He became the lead author on a science paper about the latter, and the team was so impressed with his work that Dolci’s internship was extended another 10 months.
After a year, however, Dolci’s visa was up and so was his time in America and at JPL. But his next step was clear: He would find a way to come back. “I was really impressed by JPL, both for the people that I found here, who are open to learn and challenge themselves,” said Dolci. “And the fact that it puts on the table resources that allow great projects.”
So Dolci formulated a plan. First, he entered a PhD program in aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, which in Italy offered the chance to spend part of his studies abroad supported by his university. He also applied for the US Diversity Immigrant Visa program, sometimes called the "green card lottery." With only 50,000 people across the world randomly chosen for green cards each year from about 10 million qualified applicants, it was a long-shot – but luck was on Dolci’s side.
In 2016, Dolci returned to JPL to do research for his PhD under the JVSRP program – but this time with a green card in hand.
For the last year, in concert with his PhD thesis, Dolci has been helping develop technology for a possible future NASA mission to bring samples from Mars back to Earth. In 2020, the agency will send a rover to the surface of Mars, where one of its goals will be to collect samples of Martian rocks and soil that could be returned to Earth in the future. Getting those samples to Earth would require a series of never-attempted feats, each with unique challenges.
Dolci is helping develop a device to transfer the sample from a container launched from Mars to a spacecraft that would carry the samples home. It would all need to happen remotely, in space, without the device jamming or exposing the samples to contaminants.
Having always approached problems from a theoretical perspective, Dolci says the chance to get hands-on with actual hardware has opened his eyes to new career possibilities.
“I think that you can really learn something when you put your hands on it,” said Dolci. “Otherwise, yeah, you know the theory, but there’s an ocean between theory and practice.”
Recently, Dolci’s manager encouraged him to apply for a job at JPL. He used the invitation as a chance to explore a career move – one that would take him beyond theory to start building devices capable of answering questions.
"I'm looking for a unity between science and space technology,” said Dolci, who will start his new job in JPL’s Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators group in November. “Robotics seems to me to be the best place in which these two interests find the common point to be able to provide a technological answer to scientific problems."
Dolci poses in front of an astronaut workstation called SPACEHAB on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy: Marco Dolci
Dolci admits with a sheepish grin that he still has another big aspiration. In four years, once he becomes a US citizen, he plans to apply to be an astronaut. For now, though, he’s focused on learning all he can, continuing to ask questions and finding new ways to seek answers.
“I consider myself really lucky to be in a place like JPL,” said Dolci. “Working here is a possibility to keep moving up, to become more mature in terms of deciding who I am, what I want to do, where I want to contribute.”
To others looking to follow his trajectory, Dolci says while luck helped push things along, it was the power of determination, his quest “to know” and a support network of family, friends and mentors that made his dreams a reality.
“I would have never made it to JPL without the support of someone who has bet on me,” said Dolci. “Don’t give up on desiring good things. Dare mighty things because we are made for great things.”
Explore JPL internship programs and apply at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/intern
The laboratory’s STEM internship and fellowship programs are managed by the JPL Education Office. Extending the reach of NASA's Office of Education, JPL Education seeks to create the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and space explorers by supporting educators and bringing the excitement of NASA missions and science to learners of all ages.
A “teachable moment” turned into a science fair win for an eighth-grader in Ontario, Canada, who based his project on a classroom activity from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Joshua Dove, 13, says he originally planned to explore the effects of storage temperature on golf balls until his grandfather, a space enthusiast and environmental consultant, saw a Caltech news story he had to share.
The story was about how an instrument called LIGO had detected gravitational waves for the first time, confirming a key piece of Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. A web search led Dove to the JPL Education website and its “Dropping In With Gravitational Waves” activity, where he learned how to model the gravitational wave discovery using gelatin, a laser and marbles.
“Scientific models allow scientists, and students, to understand and explain phenomena that might be difficult or impossible to see,” said JPL Education Specialist Lyle Tavernier, who created the lesson for the website’s Teachable Moments blog. The blog, from the JPL Education Office, helps educators turn NASA- and JPL-related mission and science news into activities for the classroom. “While the LIGO detectors are located thousands of miles apart, this activity helps students understand gravitational waves using a model that fits on their desk!”
Dove made modifications to the JPL Education activity for his science fair project, including using Legos to create a device that could drop a marble from different heights. He says figuring out how he needed to alter the design was his favorite part of the project.
With the help of his mom and grandfather plus a few tips from Tavernier, Dove was able to modify the lesson for his science fair project, which looked at whether the model would show consistent and predictable variations in the movement of the laser (gravitational waveform) depending on the energy released during a marble (black hole) collision.
“There was a trend that suggested the greater the weight of the impacting object, the larger the amplitude of the waveform,” said Dove, noting in his abstract that there were some inconsistencies in the results that would require more testing. He plans to do that this summer.
After presenting at his school’s science fair, Dove was asked by his teacher to enter the regional competition, where he won an award from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Dove’s mom says the win was a big confidence booster for her son, who hopes to eventually work at NASA or become an inventor. “I would like to invent things that would help people affected by a natural disaster,” he said.
As far as advice for other science fair participants, Dove says, “Don't be upset if you don't get the results you are expecting, and don't be afraid to make modifications to your experiment.” In fact, he says it was working through the modifications that turned out to be his favorite part of the project.
His other advice: “Have a good mentor.” Or in Dove’s case, three. In addition to support from his grandfather and mom, it was Dove’s older sister, a science fair winner herself, who encouraged him to enter the regional competition. And thanks to the encouragement, Dove has no plans to stop now. “I would like to learn more about detecting other intergalactic phenomenon,” he said.
For tips on creating a winning science fair project, watch JPL Education’s “How to Do a Science Fair Project” video series.
Explore the gravitational waves activity and more standards-aligned STEM lessons for grades K-12 at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach
The laboratory’s K-12 education initiatives are managed by the JPL Education Office. Extending the reach of NASA’s Office of Education, JPL Education seeks to create the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and space explorers by supporting educators and bringing the excitement of NASA missions and science to learners of all ages.
UPDATE: March 16, 2017 – An illustrated answer key for the 2017 NASA Pi Day Challenge is now available here.
NASA is giving space fans a reason to celebrate Pi Day, the March 14 holiday created in honor of the mathematical constant pi. For the fourth year in a row, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created an illustrated Pi Day Challenge featuring four math problems NASA scientists and engineers must solve to explore space. The challenge is designed to get students excited about pi and its applications beyond the classroom. This year’s problem set, designed for students in grade six through high school – but fun for all – features Mars craters, a total solar eclipse, a close encounter with Saturn, and the search for habitable worlds.
› Educators, get the standards-aligned Pi Day Challenge lesson and download the free poster and handouts. The answers to all four problems will be released in a companion infographic on March 16.
Read on for more about Pi Day, the science behind the 2017 problem set and to learn how NASA scientists and engineers use pi.
Why March 14?
Pi is what’s known as an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation never ends and it never repeats. It has been calculated to more than one trillion digits, but NASA scientists and engineers actually use far fewer digits in their calculations (see “How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?”). The approximation 3.14 is often precise enough, hence the celebration occurring on March 14, or 3/14 (when written in US month/day format). The first known celebration occurred in 1988, and in 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi.
Why It’s Important
While many of us celebrate by eating pi-themed pie and trying to memorize as many digits of pi as possible (the record is 70,030 digits), scientists and engineers at NASA take pi even further, using it in their day-to-day work exploring space!
“Finding the volume of a sphere, area of a circle (and thus volume of a cylinder) are well known applications of pi,” said Charles Dandino, a JPL engineer who designs robots for extreme environments. “But those relationships also form the basis for how stiff a structure is, how it will vibrate, and understanding how a design might fail.”
Rachel Weinberg works on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, or OCO-3, instrument, which will track the distribution of carbon dioxide across Earth. She says pi came in handy during her studies at MIT and still does today for her work at JPL. “Just the other day during a meeting, the team went to the whiteboard and used pi to discuss the angles and dimensions of optical components on OCO-3,” she said.
Pi allows us to calculate the size and area of two- and three-dimensional shapes, says Anita Sengupta, a JPL engineer, who has worked on a variety of planetary missions. “In my career, pi has allowed me to calculate the size of a shield needed to enter the atmosphere of Venus and the size of a parachute that could safely land the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Most recently we used pi in our calculations of the expanding atom cloud we will create for an experiment called the Cold Atom Laboratory, which will fly aboard the International Space Station.”
The Science Behind the Challenge
The Pi Day Challenge gives students a chance to take part in recent discoveries and upcoming celestial events, all while using math and pi just like NASA scientists and engineers.
“Students always want to know how math is used in the real world,” said Ota Lutz, a senior education specialist at JPL who helped create the Pi Day Challenge. “This problem set demonstrates the interconnectedness of science, math and engineering, providing teachers with excellent examples of cross-cutting concepts in action and students with the opportunity to solve real-world problems.”
Here’s some of the science behind this year’s problem set.
The craters that cover Mars can tell us a lot about the Red Planet. Studying ejecta – the material blasted out during an impact – can tell us even more. Information about ejecta patterns even came up during a recent workshop to discuss and select the final candidates for the Mars 2020 rover landing site. For the first problem in our Pi Day Challenge, students use pi and the area and perimeter of two craters to identify which was made by an impactor that struck Mars at a low angle. Researchers found that low-angle impactors create an unusual ejecta pattern around craters on Mars. As part of the research, scientists are currently working to identify and catalog these craters.
The year 2017 brings a unique astronomical event to the United States for the first time in nearly 40 years! On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will cross the continental United States. Starting in Oregon, the shadow of the moon will cross the country at more than 1,000 miles per hour, making its way to the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. Everyone inside the moon’s shadow will witness one of the most impressive sights nature has to offer. So how big is the shadow? In the second part of NASA’s Pi Day Challenge, students will use pi to calculate the area of the moon’s shadow on Earth during the total solar eclipse.
This year also marks the final chapter in the exciting story of NASA’s Cassini mission at Saturn. Since 2004, Cassini has been orbiting the ringed giant, vastly improving our understanding of the second largest planet in the solar system. After more than 12 years around Saturn, Cassini’s fuel is running low, so mission operators have devised a grand finale that will take the spacecraft closer to Saturn than ever before – inside the gap between the planet and its rings – and finally into Saturn’s cloud tops, where it will burn up. The finale is designed to prevent the spacecraft from crashing into and possibly contaminating any of Saturn’s scientifically intriguing moons. In the Pi Day Challenge, students will use pi to safely navigate the spacecraft on its final orbits and dive into Saturn.
Finally, students will investigate a relatively new and very exciting realm in astronomy, the search for habitable worlds. The discovery of exoplanets – worlds orbiting stars outside of our solar system – has changed our understanding of the universe. Until 1995, exoplanets hadn’t even been detected. Now, using the transit method – where planets are detected by measuring the light they block as they pass in front of a star – more than 2,300 exoplanets have been discovered. Recently, astronomers discovered a record seven Earth-size planets orbiting a single star called Trappist-1. Students will use pi to identify which of Trappist-1’s planets orbit in the star’s habitable zone – the area where liquid water could exist.
Join the Conversation
- Join the conversation and share your Pi Day Challenge answers with @NASA/JPL_Edu on social media using the hashtag #NASAPiDayChallenge
- Pi Day: What’s Going ‘Round – Tell us what you’re up to this Pi Day and share your stories and photos with NASA.
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