The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) is providing a number of resources to help students, teachers, school district administrators, families, and communities across the nation follow the Final Flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-134). Listed below are the resources available to you at this web site.
1. Student Voices of Mission Control — Powered by TWITTER
Each of the following SSEP Communities has designated students to serve as Student Voices of Mission Control (SVoMC), who will be Tweeting using a SVoMC Twitter account designated just for their community.
SVoMCs will be providing continuous coverage of the Flight of Endeavour, the experiment their community has aboard Endeavour (see Selected Experiments page), the loading of their experiment into the payload, interviews of student researchers by students, the excitement spreading across their community, the experience of the community’s attendees at the launch at KARS Park at Kennedy Space Center, and the return to Earth of their experiment and harvesting of the experiment samples.
You can follow each individual account on Twitter, and via Twitter have a conversation with the SVoMCs. Links to each Twitter account are provided below, along with a link to the profile of the SSEP community. Or you can monitor all accounts at once on this web site. See Section 2 below.
SVoMC Twitter Account ……………. SSEP Community
SPS_SVoMC (go to Twitter page) Shelton, CT
Shuttle_SVoMC1 (go to Twitter page) Lincolnwood, IL
Shuttle_SVoMC4 (go to Twitter page) Broward County, FL
Shuttle_SVoMC6 (go to Twitter page) Guilford County, NC
Shuttle_SVoMC8 (go to Twitter page) Ballston Spa, NY
NOTE: let friends, family, and teachers know which Twitter accounts to follow.
NOTE TO STUDENT VOICES OF MISSION CONTROL: you can get the latest information on STS-134 operational status, to assist you in Tweeting, from the resources listed in Sections 2, 3, and 4 below.
NOTE TO EDUCATORS: read about the Power of Twitter for Education at Huffington Post
2. Live, Continuous STS-134 Streaming Coverage
We have pulled together, in one single stream of information, live coverage of Tweets from NASA Johnson Space Center and NASA Kennedy Space Center, Tweets from the STS-134 crew, Tweets from SSEP Student Voices of Mission Control (SVoMCs), and all posts to the SSEP Community Blogs. All entries are aggregated in chronological order.
The NASA Twitter accounts that are brought into the feed are: NASAKennedy, NASA_Johnson, AstronIronMike (Astronaut E. Michael Fincke)
NOTE: give friends, family, and teachers the URL for the page below. Tell them they might also want to subscibe to the SSEP National Blog on the SSEP Home Page to receive new SSEP information as it becomes available.
Jump to the sub-page: Live STS-134 Streaming Coverage: NASA on Twitter, SSEP SVoMCs on Twitter, and SSEP Community Blogs
3. LIVE Video Feed of SSEP Experiment Loading and NASA TV
We are providing a live video and audio stream from the NASA Space Life Sciences Lab during loading of the SSEP student experiments into the MDA mini-laboratory before handover of the payload to NASA. You might see Nick Fingland, Ron Jones, and John Cassanto.
You will also find NASA TV on the Video Coverage page. See the NASA TV Schedule to plan your viewing times.
Jump to the sub-page: Video Coverage of STS-134
4. Making the Historic Flights of STS-134 and STS-135 Teachable Moments in the Classroom and at Home
Mommy, do you remember long ago what it was like
when the Space Shuttle was still flying?
In likely less than 3 months, no Shuttle will ever again return to the launch pad. We are indeed living through a moment in history, and it ought to be a teachable moment in the classroom and at home. Take some time through the rest of the school year, to read about the Shuttle program and its accomplishments. To help you, we’ve pulled together some resources for teachers and parents.
Jump to the sub-page: Make the Final Flights of the Space Shuttle a Teachable Moment in the Classroom and at Home