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For over half a century, NASA has inspired people across the world to look to the heavens and wonder what secrets are hidden within the cosmos. Solving those mysteries has long been the domain of lab-coat wearing scientists in government agencies and universities. However, with the advent of the internet, social web, and open source data, it has become possible for anyone to make scientific discoveries about our universe. Find out how you can actively contribute to space exploration and how the collective power of the internet is enabling the future of scientific research.
The NASA Advisory Council provides perspective, advice, and counsel to NASA leadership on areas of importance to the agency. The Council has nine committees, one of which is the Education and Public Outreach Committee. During their meetings, they receive updates on NASA programs and activities. The names in italics below were in attendance for the LAUNCH presentation this week. Now you can see it too.
NASA Advisory Council Education and Public Outreach Committee members:
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Last week, we held our West Coast LAUNCHpad Salon with the LAUNCH team to talk lessons learned from two successful events, LAUNCH:Water and LAUNCH:Health; and start planning LAUNCH:Energy. The Cazneau Group, one of our implementation partners, hosted the Salon at their offices in Sausalito, California. Great conversation, great setting, great food. But best of all, great common goal — to bring about positive change to our home planet, one innovation at a time.
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This is it! The week we host LAUNCH: Health, the second in our series of sustainability incubators.
NASA partnered with USAID, Department of State, and NIKE to create the LAUNCH initiative to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to global challenges. Through LAUNCH, NASA can host a global conversation about innovative solutions. We’re problem-solvers, after all. That’s what we do best.
We’ve been super busy planning our next LAUNCH sustainability forum. The topic for our second forum is “sustaining human life.” LAUNCH is our incubator program that searches for visionaries, whose world-class ideas, technologies or programs show great promise for making tangible impacts on society. At each LAUNCH forum, ten innovators and 40 thought leaders come together to address these sustainability challenges.
Often health isn’t considered a sustainability challenge, but think about it. What good is sustaining air quality, clean water supplies, and renewable energy sources if humans aren’t here to enjoy it? What happens if we’re not around to tell the story of humanity?
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I know that much of the success I’ve enjoyed in my life and my career is because of the support and encouragement I’ve received along the way. That’s why I think it’s important to share my passion for space with kids and show them what they can accomplish if they are willing to work for it.
Over the past week, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege to volunteer with both the United Space School and the International Space Settlement Design Competition. Both programs bring students from around the world here to Houston to participate in exercises geared towards the design of future ventures in space.
Cross-posted from the original on my NASA.gov blog
Under President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, NASA is exploring new ways to share with the public the exciting science we take part in every day. NASA has a long history of sharing its discoveries with the public, but figuring out how to present it in a way that is both easy to understand and simple to use frequently poses a challenge. By partnering with private industry, NASA has the opportunity to take advantage of existing technology innovations that can deliver science data in a format that is more publically consumable.
The National Space Policy is not a plan. I think the rumor-mongering and anticipation leading up to its release yesterday show just how disconnected most of us in the technical world really are from how policy is made and what it actually is. I even saw one person say on Twitter that there was a rumor going around that SpaceX was going to get a sole-source, non-competitive contract for US launches out of it.
The National Space Policy is an outline for the goals, objectives, and guiding principles of all US government activity in space. It is a high-level executive document that is intended to bring together the various disparate elements under a single framework that generally explains the Administration’s thought process. Nothing more, nothing less.
There were no surprises in President Obama’s speech on space policy delivered today at Kennedy Space Center.
He reiterated that NASA will build a Crew Return Vehicle for the ISS based on the Orion capsule, begin development of heavy-lift rockets, expand scientific and robotic research, and begin a series of programs intended to expand the state-of-the-art in space technology and on-orbit operations.
