DEADLINE: Your “Two Patch Plan” must be received by NCESSE via email by October 31, 2011.
DEADLINE: Winning Mission Patches must be received by NCESSE (see address below) by close of business (EST) February 1, 2012.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is about inspiring America’s next generation of scientists and engineers, and engaging entire communities in the process. Student teams proposing real experiments to fly on the International Space Station is the core SSEP activity. But community-wide engagement, and cross-disciplinary learning are also cornerstone objectives for SSEP in the context of the embraced Learning Community Model for STEM education (see the Community Program page.)
In this spirit, and continuing the tradition of SSEP on the final flights of Space Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis, we’re providing the opportunity for you to conduct an art and design competition across your community—for a great number of students—to create a Mission Patch—a paper 4-inch x 4-inch square emblem that captures your SSEP experience. We will then fly your Mission Patch in space as part of the payload containing your experiment, and it will be returned to you embossed with a certification stating that it flew in space. The mission patch competition is also an opportunity to keep community-wide excitement alive post experiment selection while we’re all waiting for launch, and a means to extend the program in an interdisciplinary manner to engage, e.g., art and design classes.
While the mission patch competition should be open to at least the students participating in the SSEP experiment design competition— which is limited to grades 5-12—we strongly encourage each community to broaden participation by opening the mission patch competition to wider student involvement across grades K-12, to classes beyond STEM disciplines, and to student groups across your community—even the community beyond your school. The idea is COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT with hundreds to thousands of your students given the opportunity to participate. You should view the mission patch competition as one way your entire community can celebrate involvement in this program, and become aware of your student scientists designing real microgravity experiments for the International Space Station.
The mission patch design competition is set up in each SSEP community in a way that suits the community best. Each community will decide its own deadline for submitting mission patches from within the community and set up its own process for selecting the winning design. The deadline above is the time by which the winning patch from each community must reach the SSEP national program office.
We will fly up to TWO Mission Patches Per Community
We recognize that students’ art and design skills at lower and upper grade levels are significantly different so that a competition to select a single patch to fly will put the lower grade level participants at a disadvantage. We also want to encourage each community to reach out to grades K-4 and the greater community.We will therefore fly up to TWO mission patches per community. But the idea is to give two different student groups the opportunity to have their own competition. The intent is not to have a competition for a single group and fly the top two patches.
For a community to fly two patches, we are therefore requiring the community to submit a “Two Patch Plan” for how they will engage two different groups, and how that plan extends SSEP to a wider community beyond those students engaged in flight experiment design. Your Two Patch Plan should not be longer than a single page. We encourage you and your team to think creatively. NCESSE will strive to turn around a review of your plan in 24 hours.Please email your plan to jeffgoldstein@ncesse.org. The deadline for NCESSE to receive your Two Patch Plan is October 31, 2011.
Mission Patch Requirements
At right is the selected Mission Patch from Omaha North High Magnet School in Nebraska which flew with their experiment on STS-134. Click on their patch to see it up close and personal. See all the Mission Patches that flew on STS-134 (Endeavour) and STS-135 (Atlantis) at the SSEP Mission Patch page, which is found at the separate SSEP Community Network Hubsite.
On return from space, your Mission Patch will be returned to you for your community to display. It will be a testament to the participation by your students, teachers, and community in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, and a truly remarkable student research experience on the International Space Station.
Requirements:
1. The Mission Patch must be a 4-inch x 4-inch piece of paper, and its design should reflect pride in your community, and your participation in the SSEP.
2. There is no restriction on the type of paper or the inks to be used. But to fly, it must be paper not card stock or cardboard.
3. The Mission Patch can be black & white or full color.
4. The Mission Patch can only be composed of a single sheet of 4-inch x 4-inch paper and the ink on the paper.
5. The Mission Patch cannot include multiple layers of paper glued or taped on top of one another.
6. We require a jpg image of the Mission Patch so we can display it on the SSEP website.
7. We require a short writeup of your Mission Patch competition describing the student groups that participated and the number of patches you received. The writeup must include: the number of students that actually participated in the mission patch design competition; the grade levels of the students that participated; and the total number of patches submitted to the competition. This description will also be placed on the website. The description can be no more than 150 words (See, e.g., the STS-135 Mission Patch page).
8. Your community is responsible for the cost of priority shipment (e.g., FedEx) for: 1) mailing the Mission Patch(es) to NCESSE, and 2) for return to you after the flight.
All communities must send their Mission Patch(es) to the following address, and must include a pre-paid priority return mailer or completed FedEx airbill. We strongly recommend using a shipping option that allows tracking of your package. We therefore do not recommend USPS surface mail.
Deadline for NCESSE to receive your Mission Patch(es): February 1, 2012.
National Center for Earth and Space Science Education
Attn: SSEP Mission Patch
PO Box 3806
Capitol Heights, MD 20791
The jpg image of your Mission Patch, and the writeup of your Mission Patch competition, should be sent via email to Dr. Harri Vanhala, National SSEP Program Manager, at: harrivanhala@ncesse.org
From the entire SSEP National Team to all the students, teachers, parents, and administrators in your community, have fun with the Mission Patch art and design competition!