Middle school students participating in NASA’s International Space
Station (ISS) EarthKAM education program will help scientists from
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center study Earth’s changing surface by
taking pictures from the ISS April 29-May 2. ISS EarthKAM is an
educational program in which students control, via Internet connections,
a high-resolution digital camera operating on the International Space
Station’s Destiny science module.

This unique partnership benefits both middle school students as well as
research scientists. Students profit by being involved in the process of
real scientific research as well as through their interaction with
scientists as they collaborate on the analysis of the research images.
Students gain significant first-hand knowledge about the topics of
research including global tectonics, faulting, volcanoes, river and lake
systems, as well as land-use changes and humanity’s impact on Earth’s
surface.

Nikki Woxberg’s students at McNair Magnet School in Cocoa, Florida
worked with Jacob Yates, a NASA geologist, during an ISS EarthKAM
mission in early April. Woxberg pointed to the benefits of the ISS
EarthKAM-Scientist partnership. “It gave meaning to what the students
were studying. They worked especially hard to make sure that the image
requests they sent up to the ISS were the very best possible.” Woxberg
continued, “Having direct involvement of scientists added significant
excitement and seriousness to the whole learning process.”

Scientist Yates indicated that, “This partnership provides immediate
dividends to student education as well as science. Student experiences
are enriched by our interactions while valuable image data, that
otherwise might have been missed, is acquired by the students.” He added
that, “We view this as an opportunity to help encourage the next
generation of NASA scientists.”

ISS EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School students) was
created by Dr. Sally Ride, America’s first woman astronaut, in 1994.
Over 8,500 high-quality digital pictures of Earth have since been taken
by middle-school students. All are publicly available on the Web. During
the early April ISS EarthKAM operating period, 71 schools representing
23 states and four countries took 696 pictures of Earth.

Two schools, experienced with ISS EarthKAM operations, will participate
in the ISS EarthKAM student-scientist partnership during the April
29-May 2 operating period. It is expected that this pilot project will
expand with successive ISS EarthKAM missions.

An additional ISS EarthKAM picture-taking mission is scheduled for
November of 2003. Four additional operating periods are scheduled for 2004.

Schools interested in participating in this free educational program
should contact ISS EarthKAM at: http://www.earthkam.ucsd.edu/

For more information about NASA’s Office of Education visit: http://education.nasa.gov

For more information about the TERC Center for Earth and Space Science
Education visit: http://www.terc.edu/