Musings of a Migrant Science Teacher

 
 
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'Little SDO'
Things have been so nuts around here lately. It completely ruined my "I'm going to blog every Friday" resolution. Last Friday I was in Florida, this Friday I will be on my way TO Florida again... The marathon has begun, forces are in motion, and there is no way to get off this ride, even though I'm at the doors yelling "LET ME OFF!"

I've shared a little about the projects keeping me busy, and since I've done nothing new since then I thought I'd share some more details. These aren't your every day regular projects. They are first time ever done projects, which might explain my fried nerves.
My rocket launches next week.

Yep. My rocket. Well, I don't own it. But for the last two years I've been doing outreach and education for the Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA's first mission in the Living With a Star Program, meant to study the Sun. I've been designing lessons, visiting classrooms, speaking with teachers, making things, waiting, hoping that launch day would finally come. We've been pushed back a total of two years now. Problems arise, more popular missions come up, and we get a new launch date.
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Launch Event Map
On the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) front, this means lanyards are ordered, posters and lithos are printed, lessons are approved, and travel gets coordinated. Our team, however has always challenged it's self to aim high and see what happens. We have the lanyards and posters, but we dreamed of more. We dreamed of an interactive event, a launch people could get excited about - that teachers and students and offices and communities could participate in. It is, after all, your NASA.

Through Twitter that is exactly what we've been able to plan. As of this morning there were 200 events - school or independent - registered across the country (and world!) People in Florida will be talking to people in India who will be talking to classrooms in VA and TX. All this around the launch of a satellite that "no one cares about." I'm exhausted with work in preparation for these events, but I'm constantly re-energized by talking to these teachers about their classrooms, students, and plans to get them excited about science and space exploration.

I had a "Once in a lifetime" moment last weekend. I taught a teacher workshop at Kennedy Space Center. For me this was the Mecca of science/space education. NASA gives you quality resources, but to get them from a NASA center is even better, and to be the one giving those resources - lets just say I had an emotional moment. I don't plan on spending my career at NASA, and most likely this will be the only launch I experience from the inside. Standing in front of those teachers at the Kennedy ERC was a high point for me, truly a once in a lifetime moment.

This whole launch process has gotten very emotional. My boss and I were tearing up in the office last week. The launch means a change in EPO approach, the end of a phase and the beginning of a new one. The things we've been working on for so long are finally done, finally here. It's finally time to say goodbye.
 


Comments

romeoch

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:17:21


What you and your team have been doing is truly outstanding and is setting the bar for other launches very high. It's one thing to get excited about a manned space flight - you get much more emotional attached to the mission because you have a crew, you have people, you have heroes on that flight. Then there are some unmanned missions with big profiles. Everything that lands or crashes somewhere gets an immediate attraction (not saying it's not deserved! Heck, parallel parking for most Americans is an art. Try landing a rover on a planet and drive it around for years. Or we love to go to carnivals and shot balls at empty cans to win a stuffed animal. Most of us don't hit the cans - now try hitting a moving object in Space...). But Little SDO is "just" going to be in a geosync orbit, some 34,000 km above NW and that's it?! So, how do you get people excited? What is so special about looking at the Sun? I mean we can all see the Sun every day. Unless you live at one of those places where it's dark for weeks at a time or you have very dense fog. Well, our Solar Dynamics Observatory is special in so many ways. And let's not go into the science of why. Let's just look at it from an outside perspective. Remember when we started Social Media on SDO? 1,200 tweets ago NASA_SDO was flirting with LRO or hundreds of Facebook updates before, Little was declaring it's friendship to Camilla. But why? We have given SDO personality. It's not just SDO, it's Little SDO. Even though there is nothing little about Little SDO. Little has a BFF named Camilla. Ok, so far so good. Camilla is a Rubber Chicken! Kopernikus is moving in his grave. Or isn't he?! The scientists behind the mission were skeptical and still are. How silly of us to love an animated spacecraft with flapping solar wings! How childish to have rubber chicken (not even a rubber duck) follow SDO! But not so fast - suddenly SDO was called "NASA's spacecraft with a personality", people got more and more interested. Kids started to associate SDO with Camilla, Camilla with the Sun, SDO with the Sun, teachers sent us messages saying they want to meet Camilla and SDO, asking us for more pictures, more stories because kids can related better. Little SDO now has personality and people have come to love it, people have become attached to our Little Solar Dynamics Observatory. And not only people like us, who have worked on this mission for years. It's been almost 8 years since I joined the SDO Team. In September of 2002 I attended the Kick-Off meeting at Goddard and had no idea what to expect. We didn't even think of Social Media back then. But, Camilla was already part of it! Now it's 2010 and you put together a social media event that no other space mission has seen before. While the Shuttle tweet-up got all the glory, SDO gets all the coverage. Look at the map of independent Tweet-ups for a box the size of a small bus, taking some pictures of the sun. In order to accomplish that, it really took new ideas, creativity, dedication, long hours, lack of sleep, frustration, pride and acceptance that some will think we are weird.
You have made a huge impact, you have created something people will continue to talk about for years to come, measure other activities to this one. You have created memories.

In seven days it's time to say our good-by but also a welcome at the same time. Now the magic of science will take over and data will be collected and analyzed. Theories will be formed, presentations will be given, people will be educated and we are all going to look at our Sun just a little differently. And someday SDO will be turned off, HMI, EVE and AIA will close their eyes on the Sun and we will all know to have been part of something truly amazing, something out of this world.

But first we are going to launch this silver box with flapping wings, blinking eyes and rotating devices called Little SDO into Space! Sleep or no sleep!

Thank you for all you have done and will do for us.

 

Aleya

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:18:49

Woah Romeo,

You're killing me! Longest comment ever! But thanks :)

See you in Florida!
Aleya

 

Marie

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:30:08

Dear Aleya & Romeo,
Our school can't thank you enough for helping us inspire kids to dream and learn about space exploration and science. When I agreed to teach our elementary students about the SDO mission, I wondered, "How in the WORLD am I going to hook these kids about studying the Sun?" I was at a loss until I stumbled across your FB page for Little Sdo and saw the Camilla connection. Bingo. Then we discovered the excellent videos narrated by "Dr. Dean" and the Little SDO spots. Add that to the KSC workshop materials and our own Arts activities and we've got a multi-grade solar unit that will be integrated into our engineering curriculum for years to come. (Just wait until we send you a video of our Kindergarten doing the SDO Cheer!)
Thanks for the resources, encouragment, and fun. NASA's SDO Edu department ROCKS!

 



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