2011 OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award Video Contest

Optimus PrimeNASA has opened registration for the 2011 OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award Contest. Featuring OPTIMUS PRIME, the leader of the popular TRANSFORMERS brand, the contest highlights spinoffs from NASA technologies that are used on Earth. The goal is to help students understand the benefits of NASA technology to their daily lives. Last year’s contest was open to students in grades 3-8 and resulted in 76 video submissions from over 190 students in 31 states.


For 2011, the OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award Contest has been expanded to include students in grades 3-12. Each student, or group of students, will submit a three- to five-minute video on a selected NASA spinoff technology listed in NASA’s 2010 “Spinoff” publication. Videos must demonstrate an understanding of the NASA spinoff technology and the associated NASA mission, as well as the commercial application and public benefit associated with the spinoff technology.

Participants must register for the contest by Jan. 3, 2012.

Video entries are due Jan. 17, 2012.Video entries will be posted on the NASA YouTube channel, and the public will be responsible for the first round of judging. The top five submissions from each of the three grade groups (Elementary [3rd-5th], Middle [6th-8th] and High School [9th-12th]) will advance for final judging. A NASA panel will select a winning entry from each group. Among other prizes, a crystal OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award Trophy will be given to winners at a special awards ceremony being held in Florida in April 2012. The innovators associated with the NASA technology highlighted in the winning videos also will receive trophies, as will their commercial partners.

For more information, visit the OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award website.

Questions about this contest should be directed to Darryl Mitchell at Darryl.R.Mitchell@nasa.gov.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.


REMINDER: Live Video Chat Today at Noon

Did you know there are approximately 19,000 man-made objects orbiting Earth that serve no useful purpose? And those are just the objects having a diameter of 10 centimeters (4 inches) or larger. The estimated population of objects between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is closer to 500,000! Now, think about launching new spacecraft or satellite into space without hitting any of these objects and you can appreciate the kind of work Danielle Margiotta does as an engineer for NASA. Join us at noon EST on Dec. 13, 2011, to ask Danielle questions about the ins and outs of contamination engineering, or how to help a spacecraft and satellites navigate and manage their inevitable encounters with space junk.


Submit questions during the chat through a chat window, or send them to NASA-Explorer-Schools@mail.nasa.gov.

Classroom Discussion: Buy a Live Christmas Tree or an Artificial One?

Know your trees: Images of a Douglas Fir, Eastern Red Cedar, Fraser Fir, Noble Fir, Norway Spruce, Scotch Pine, Virginia Pine and White SpruceGet a real tree this holiday season. Buy it or cut it yourself at a tree farm. Either way, you will be helping the environment.


Surprised? Most people think it’s bad to cut a live holiday tree. Instead, they buy an artificial tree made of plastic or other synthetic material. Because they reuse this artificial tree year after year, they think they are saving real trees. Farmers plant Christmas trees in rows just as if they were corn.

But not so. Farmers grow trees especially for the holidays. They plant huge tracts of land in beautiful noble pines, Douglas firs, blue spruce, and other favorites. It may take 8 to 12 years to grow a good sized tree. But during that time, the tree is taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. It is cleaning the air and helping global warming. If people didn’t buy the cut trees, the farmers wouldn’t plant them.

When you are done with your holiday tree, you can recycle it. Most cities have programs to pick up your holiday tree and grind it up into mulch. Then it is spread back onto the land to help grow something else-or more trees.

No matter how many years you reuse an artificial tree, someday it will get thrown away and end up in a landfill for the next 1000 years!

So, help save Earth. Chop down a tree!

Let us know what you or your students think by adding a comment to this post.


Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.




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GOES Satellite Video of 2011 Hurricane Season Released

The GOES series of satellites provide continuous (every 30 minutes) satellite information for the U.S. and are critical during hurricane season. GOES-11 and GOES-13 provide infrared and visible satellite data over the western and eastern U.S. and eastern Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. The 2011 hurricane season is now available in one 4.5 minute video from NOAA. GOES satellites are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA just released a video from the GOES-13 satellite that takes the viewer through all 19 tropical cyclones that formed in the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Supplemental animations and images were also created by NASA’s GOES Project. Those animations show activity in each month of the 2011 hurricane season. September (below) puts on the best show, with several storms circling clockwise around the Bermuda High.

September 2011 Hurricane Season (East Coast)

Double click on image above to start the video.

NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.


To read more about this discovery go to https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.


New Horizons Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Approach Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons mission reached a special milestone on Dec. 2, 2011, on its way to reconnoiter the Pluto system, coming closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft.

It’s taken New Horizons 2,143 days of high-speed flight – covering more than a million kilometers per day for nearly six years—to break the closest-approach mark of 1.58 billion kilometers set by NASA’s Voyager 1 in January 1986.


Read the full story at the Science@NASA website.


New Horizons Update

Dec. 10 — Total Eclipse of the Moon

The action begins around 4:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time when the red shadow of Earth first falls across the lunar disk.  By 6:05 a.m. Pacific Time, the moon will be fully engulfed in red light. This event—the last total lunar eclipse until 2014—is visible from the Pacific side of North America, across the entire Pacific Ocean to Asia and Eastern Europe.



Learn more about lunar eclipses by viewing the video below.

Who Are NES Teachers?

The NASA Explorer Schools project invests in science, technology, engineering and mathematics educators to inspire and engage future scientists, engineers, and technicians NASA needs to continue our journey.



Are you too looking for exciting and interactive ways to connect your students to NASA? Are you in search of engaging, academically rigorous resources and activities that you can easily implement into your classroom? Do you want to give your students the opportunity to chat with a NASA expert and have their questions answered live online? Check out NASA Explorer Schools.

Special 'Arthur Christmas' Segment Featuring NASA Spinoff

Sony Pictures Animation team created a special one-minute segment from the film to help bring attention to the many high tech gadgets and everyday items that come from NASA technology. The educational segment premiered on the Smithsonian Channel during primetime on Tuesday, Nov. 22. It also can be downloaded for use by educators and media.




Video — Arthur Christmas: Elf 6409EF Discusses NASA Technology