Nov 18 2015

From The Space Library

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Revision as of 04:29, 23 November 2015

Release M15-164 New York Students Quiz Space Station Crew on Life Off the Earth

Students from East Side Middle School in New York will have the opportunity to speak with NASA astronauts on the International Space Station at 9:40 a.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 19 during an event hosted by TIME For Kids.

The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Space station commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Kjell Lindgren will answer questions from students during the event at the TIME Inc. headquarters. TIME For Kids has been encouraging more than 3.1 million students nationwide to follow along on Kelly’s one-year mission in its monthly magazine and online.

Media interested in covering the event should contact Melanie Kletter at melanie.kletter@timemagazine.com. TIME Inc. is located at 1271 6th Ave. in New York. The time of the call is subject to change depending on real-time space station operations.

Kelly launched to the station on March 27 as half of the first crew to spend a year on the space station. Lindgren joined him on July 22, and the two astronauts – along with their four crew mates – celebrated this month 15 years of crews living continuously aboard the space station.

Since the first crew arrived in November 2000, space station education activities have reached more than 42 million students from space. This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of the NASA Education Office’s efforts to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning in the United States. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station through NASA Education’s STEM on Station activity provides them with an authentic, live experience of space exploration, space study and the scientific components of space travel, while introducing them to the possibilities of life in space.

Release 15-213 NASA Awards Grants to Broaden STEM Education for Underserved Students

NASA's Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) has selected four minority serving institutions for cooperative agreement awards totaling approximately $2 million to help strengthen science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curricula at the schools.

Four universities were selected to receive MUREP Other Opportunities grants, which provide up to a total of $500,000 to each school, who have three years to create and implement their program. The solicitation challenged schools to propose innovative ways to create and implement STEM activities, with a goal of increasing the number of historically underserved students studying STEM fields relevant to NASA’s diverse exploration mission.

"NASA’s MUREP program provides support for colleges and universities to build programs that connect students from underrepresented and underserved communities with NASA, giving them the strong foundation they need to pursue and excel in STEM fields,” said Donald James, associate administrator for NASA’s Office of Education.

The selected institutions are:

• University of Hawaii, Honolulu
• Howard University, Washington
• The University of Texas at El Paso
• Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina

Through MUREP’s competitive awards, NASA provides financial assistance to minority serving institutions, including historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic serving institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and other minority serving institutions and eligible community colleges. These institutions recruit and retain underrepresented and underserved students, including women, girls and persons with disabilities, into STEM fields.