On Sunday June 9, thirty-two undergraduate students from across the United States will arrive in California for the fifth annual Student Airborne Research Program (SARP). The thirty-two students hail from thirty-two colleges and universities in twenty-two states and Puerto Rico.

The majors of the students in this interdisciplinary group cover a wide range of scientific, mathematical, and engineering disciplines.   Students were competitively selected based on their outstanding academic performance, future career plans, ability to work in teams, and interest in Earth system science.  One of the great strengths of SARP is that students from different disciplines learn from each other and work together toward common research goals.  Students also form lasting personal and professional relationships that they will carry into their future careers. 

The first two weeks of the program will take place at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (DAOF), where students will be introduced to NASA’s Earth Science research programs by NASA scientists, engineers, and program managers and by university faculty members.  Students will then fly onboard NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory where they will measure pollution and air-quality in the Los Angeles basin and in California’s Central Valley, and use remote sensing instruments to study forest ecology in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and ocean biology along the California coast. In addition to airborne data collection, students will take measurements at field sites.

The final six weeks of the program will take place at the University of California, Irvine where students will analyze and interpret the data they collected onboard the aircraft.  At the conclusion of the program, each student will deliver a final presentation on his/her results and conclusions.  Many students in the past have gone on to present their research at conferences such as the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

For frequent updates on the program throughout the summer, check out the NASA SARP blog at

http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/SARP

One hundred and sixty-four K-12 classrooms from across the United States and Chile with 3030 total students participated in online chats with Airborne Science Program mission personnel in the field during the 2012/2013 school year. 

Mission Tools Suite for Education is a unique website that allows students and teachers to connect directly with ongoing Airborne Science research campaigns.  The Mission Tools Suite (MTS) is web-based software used by mission personnel to monitor and assist with real-time decision making during the course of an Airborne Science mission.  The Airborne Science Program has created a scaled down version of the tool called MTS for Education (MTSE), which is aimed at supporting core K-12 classroom science curriculum.

The NASA Airborne Science Program’s Mission Tools Suite for Education website allows K-12 classrooms from around the world to track the locations of NASA aircraft in real-time and participate in live text-chats with mission scientists, pilots, and others flying inside the airplanes and with mission personnel on the ground.  Website features include:

•       Live flight following 

–      Students and teachers can track the position of ASP aircraft on a map in real-time

•       Live camera feeds from the aircraft (on select missions)

•       Real-time satellite data products

–      Overlay current weather, hurricane tracks, etc

•       Environmental data from the aircraft

–      Ability to plot aircraft altitude, speed, temperature, wind speed, etc. in real-time

•       Live text chats between classrooms and mission scientists, pilots, and others onboard the aircraft or on the ground

The website has so far been used during five NASA Airborne Science Program missions in 2012-2013

•       Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (Sept 2012)

•       IceBridge Antarctic (Oct-Nov 2012)

•       DISCOVER-AQ (Jan-Feb 2013)

•       ATTREX (Feb-Mar 2013)

•       IceBridge Arctic (Mar-May 2013)

From Kindergarteners asking if IceBridge personnel saw Santa when they flew over the North Pole (they did not), to middle school students asking what it feels like to fly a Global Hawk over a hurricane without actually being inside it during HS3, to high school students asking specific questions about atmospheric chemistry during DISCOVER-AQ and ATTREX, classroom chats are effective at all grade levels.

IceBridge Project Manager, Christy Hansen and Project Scientist, Michael Studinger onboard the DC-8 flying over Antarctica chatting with a middle school classroom in Maryland.

“Our 3rd graders were enthralled with following Operation IceBridge. They loved learning about the science of the mission from those on the airplane, and were fascinated with Antarctica, and learned a lot about ice shelves, glaciers, and much more. Over the course of the year, they study all the continents, so the area covered by the flights gave them an opportunity to be introduced to Google Earth and use it to explore South America and Antarctica.  Kudos to Operation Icebridge for including students in their mission. Thanks to all involved.”

Watch our educational video about the HS3 mission to see what MTSE looks like in action!

For more information and to connect your classroom with NASA Airborne Science missions all over the world, email Dr. Emily Schaller (emily.schaller(at)nasa.gov)