The “Space Academy” series – launched in 2000 by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Comcast Cable and The Discovery Channel – takes students behind the scenes of actual space missions and introduces them to engineers and scientists working on some of NASA’s most exciting projects.
Typically involving 100 invited students from Maryland middle schools, Space Academy is a hands-on, minds-on experience designed to excite and inspire both students and teachers. Held twice a year on the Applied Physics Lab campus in Laurel, Maryland, the daylong events include a briefing on a specific mission or program APL manages for NASA; a student “press conference” with project team members; lunchtime discussions with scientists and engineers; tours through "Exploration Stations" like a spacecraft mission control center and satellite communications facility; science demonstrations; even peeks at real spacecraft being built at APL!
Weeks before the actual event, students learn about the mission, its science theme, and space-related careers through classroom activities and videos developed by The Science Channel and the Applied Physics Lab.
Students of past “Academies”
learned about . . .
NEAR – the first spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid;
TIMED –
a mission to explore the atmospheric “gateway” between
Earth and space;
CONTOUR – a mission designed to study comets closer than ever before;
CRISM – a powerful camera that will search for chemical traces of past water
on Mars;
MESSENGER – the first spacecraft to orbit the innermost planet (Mercury);
STEREO – a mission to study the sun in 3-D using two nearly identical spacecraft.
NEW HORIZONS - NASA's first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
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