Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NASA’s STEM program looks to the Moon

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Steven Smith, an Education Specialist from NASA's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (or STEM) Program, joins Planetary Radio to share some of the unique opportunities available for students in the lead-up to humanity's return to the Moon. Then Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of The Planetary Society, pops in for What's Up and a new random space fact. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2023-nasa-stemSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NASA's STEM program looks to the moon, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Stephen Smith, an education specialist from NASA's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, or STEM program, joins us this week to share some of the amazing opportunities available to students. If you're a student who wants to get involved in humanity's return to the moon, now's your time to shine. Then Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, pops in for what's up and a new random space fact. If you love planetary radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.

Last September at the 2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concept Symposium in Houston, Texas, USA, I connected with two inspiring members of NASA's STEM Outreach Program, Leslie Woodward and today's guest, Stephen Smith. I'm always looking for new resources to share space exploration with students. My mother is a retired teacher, and I spent years leading children's field trips at my local observatory. and I spent years leading children's field trips at my local observatory. I've seen the power of STEM outreach on students firsthand. And as I learned more about the new opportunities that are available to students through NASA's STEM program, I knew that I had to share them with everyone that listens to Planetary Radio. This week marks the first anniversary of NASA's Artemis I missions launch on November 16, 2022.

It launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The Artemis program is gearing up to return humans to the moon for the first time in half a century, and NASA's STEM program is going hand-in-hand with Artemis, offering a variety of challenges for students. These include opportunities to work on everything from the new flagpoles on the moon to the Micro-G Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams, or Micro-G Next. This program allows undergraduate students to test their projects in the same neutral buoyancy lab, or giant swimming pool, that's used by astronauts for training at the Johnson Space Center.

Our guest today, Stephen Smith, is an education specialist for NASA's STEM program with a long history of education and outreach to students. He's here to share some of the opportunities that the program offers to students in the United States and worldwide. Hi, Stephen. It's great to see you again. Hi, thanks. Nice to see you as well. And happy STEM Day. We're recording this on November 8th, which is National STEM Day in the United States, so perfect timing. Hey, look, when you do my job, every day is STEM Day.

It's so true, though. I mean, that's kind of what we deal in, just inspiring people through teaching them more about engineering, mathematics, technology, and science, which is what STEM is all about. And of course, I should divulge that we met each other in person at this year's 2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concept Symposium. And upon meeting you, I noticed the bow tie. And anytime I see someone in a bow tie, I immediately want to know them better.

So when I ran into you, you were at a table with Leslie Woodward, another wonderful person. You're handing out packets to try to draw more attention to NASA STEM programs. And I always knew that these programs existed in the back of my mind, but I'd never really delved into them to learn what opportunities were there. So I'm really glad I get a chance to not only talk to you to learn for myself, but to share these opportunities with others. Absolutely. And the breadth and depth of STEM engagement type things that we have are ridiculous. And of course, they're all free. So coming from a background working in public education in high poverty areas, I know how important that is.

Teachers are already paying so much out of pocket for enrichment for their students. And these are all free, sort of. I mean, everyone pays for them every April 15th. Thank you for paying your taxes. But we don't double charge for them. So you've already paid for them. They're here for you. So you might as well use them. And it's all the way from K to 16. And then of course, when you include internships, now that's also graduate students. So we have something for everyone. So your role within this program has changed a lot over the years. What is your role currently? So currently I'm an education specialist with what we call our, our mega task, which sounds so cool. So we rolled all of our next gen STEM tasks into one organization.

So that includes, and I'm on four different teams within that organization. So right now I'm, I'm on the student engagement team, which is exciting and fun because I get to play with the littles and deal with students and all that fun stuff. I'm also on the educator professional development team, which works well for me because I did that earlier in my career and I was in the classroom for 20 years as an educator myself. And then I'm on a team for a really cool thing that we have called SPARX. It's S-P-A-R-X, SPARX, which is an acronym for stuff. Sorry, NASA has so many acronyms. It's so true. I once saw someone create a code where you could just put in the words you wanted,

it would spit out an acronym. And my gosh, we're so heavy in them. And we get creative with it a little bit because it's not always like first letter, first letter, first letter. Sometimes it's like first letter, third letter to make it spell something cool. But Sparks is a really cool tool that we have for educators who haven't really done

a lot of engagement type things with NASA, with those organizations. It's kind of an entry level way to get into further NASA challenges and things like that. They're grade band specific and a lot of great things like we have a Sparks 101 where you can just kind of go onto a webinar and listen to us introduce how to do this. But it really is a low bar, easy way to kind of get into working with NASA, doing some NASA stuff, learning about NASA resources. And then I'm also on a bigger, broader team. We broke up kind of our work into big, broad topics. We have Aeronaut X,

which is our airplanes, obviously, because we're still in airplanes. That's the first A in NASA. And then Solar System and Beyond really works and thinks about the wonderful work being done by James Webb Space Telescope and our work thinking about Mars and thinking about the broader planets going out. Then we have Moon, which is really focused on our Artemis missions, which are the missions going back to the Moon, which is happening soon. We are sending human beings to orbit the moon for the first time since 1972. That team has been selected. They are all incredible. And that is going to launch towards the end probably of 2024, getting ready for putting boots on the ground on the moon again

in 2025 with the first woman and first person of color walking on the surface of the moon. Amazing. It's going to be so amazing. I can't even imagine how many people that's going to inspire. We hope. And that's kind of, that's a big part of the point. And then also I'm on the earth team because NASA does a lot of earth science. We have a lot of earth facing satellites and it turns out we live here. And so we want to help with that science as well. So I'm on the earth team as well. I noticed too that a lot of people that work within the STEM program are also affiliated with a program called Guardians of Honor. What does that mean? So most of the people who work at NASA by number are contractors of some sort or on a collaborative

agreement or something like that. And then there's a core group of civil servants who actually work directly for the federal government for NASA. So Guardians of Honor is the organization that holds the contract for what we call STEM engagement or what you may think of as just education. And they hold our contract for that and then subcontract out for the pieces and parts of that as we go. So I actually technically work for Guardians of Honor. That's really cool that there's an organization for that because everyone I've met that's affiliated with that has just the coolest jobs. We kind of do. Really, yeah, it's ridiculous.

I have to pinch myself regularly. And I'll tell you, getting to work for NASA is as cool as you think it is. Same as the Planetary Society. I feel like every time I wake up, I've been working at the Planetary Society for three years, I still feel like one of these days, it's all going to be a dream. Oh gosh. Yeah. Imposter syndrome is a real thing. It absolutely is. My favorite time to be on the center is actually at night because during the day, maybe I'm part of a tour group, maybe I'm whatever, but at night there's no reason for you to be there other than you belong. So that's a thing. We're going to walk at night and the security guy waves at me. I'm like, that's right. I belong here. I belong here. But I think that's also what's kind of magical about

these STEM programs. I know as a kid, I always felt like this was something that I was passionate about, but I never knew whether or not I was going to belong in that field or whether or not I was going to be accepted. And even now as an adult, those feelings hang with me. But if we can provide opportunities to younger people to make them feel like this is yours, you belong here, that could completely change the way that they look at their future and themselves. Absolutely. And a huge part of our work is that, you know, for me, my first time on the NASA center, I was genuinely like, I found my people because they're all as nerdy as I am. They're all as excited about this

stuff as I am, but also for the groups that have historically been left out of the conversation around STEM and around these amazing things and have had to watch it from afar. A big part of my job, a big part of our job with guardians of honor, with NASA, is to show people that this is for you. We have a huge push trying to make sure that young women and girls see and know that about themselves. I was just doing a conference in Kansas City with my good friend and colleague, Dr. Jennifer Williams. And when you work with middle elementary school kids, it amazes me that everyone in STEM isn't just a woman. Because when you go to the tables full of girls, they are on this stuff. They're excited about it. They're great at it. They're following the directions. They're innovating. They're asking the like, well,

what if I do this questions? And the boys, you're like, don't put that in your nose. Why are you doing? It's just a whole different thing. But then somewhere just post middle school, high school, there's a switch. There's a something that happens where young women are convinced that STEM is not for them. And we're really trying to fight that. And one of the reasons our Artemis program is named what it is, it's named after a goddess in particular, and we're putting that first woman on the moon. And we have this wonderful graphic novel called First Woman, which please check that out. It's amazing. We just came out with volume two. That's wonderful. Oh, I didn't know volume two was out. I'll have to

get that. Oh yeah. And it's just as good as the first one. And we even have a whole camp experience around that first woman graphic novel. So really trying to get these young women in, in, in focusing on representation and all of these things. And I'll tell you here at NASA too, most of my colleagues and almost all of my bosses are all amazing women, but also with minorities. The program that I was working on when I met you is MicroG Next. And we were doing a hard push to get HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities, to participate, to send in proposals.

And it's that same thing that you're trying to convince people this is for you. And at an institutional level, in some ways, to try to get those colleges on board that this is for your students. This is something that you should be a part of. And we're combining that hopefully with representation. If you look at our astronauts who are doing Artemis II, Victor Glover, African-American male, and also the most charming human being on the planet. It's hilarious. And then Christina Cook, just giving that good representation. And if you look at our Artemis astronauts across the board, they look like us as a people,

as a country, with a wonderful mix of every ethnicity and gender and you name it. However you define yourself, there's somebody there who looks like you and yet is somehow cooler than you because it's an astronaut. It's so true. Anytime I meet an astronaut, I'm like, you're just too cool for me. Right? But really, though, we need everyone's perspectives. It's not just about pushing for diversity for diversity's sake. The more perspectives, the more backgrounds we bring into this, the better we do in our space programs.

So this is really a key thing to pursue. And we talk a lot about astronauts, of course, because NASA astronauts, that's what you think of. But NASA is so much more than that. I mean, I was a classroom teacher for 20 years and I've been at NASA for seven years. We have graphic artists. We have people who were video game designers that are now creating simulations for astronauts to learn how to be in space. We have accountants. We have photographers.

We have whatever your jam is. space. We have accountants, we have photographers, we have whatever your jam is. We have that here at NASA and you can come and be a part of this amazing work and be a part of space exploration, a part of this next step. You were mentioning earlier the strategic choice to name the Artemis program after a goddess. And it brought up this memory I have from a few years ago. I was at a Yuri's night and there was this father with two little children, a little girl and a little boy. The little boy was wearing a jacket that was covered in Apollo patches. And the little girl was wearing a jacket

that didn't have any patches on it yet, but matched. And I asked him, you know, why doesn't she have any patches yet? And he's like, well, the Artemis program is only just starting. We haven't gotten her patches yet. But one of these days,

she's going to have a jacket full of those patches too. And the look of joy on this little girl's face and her and her brother just high-fiving. It was such a magical moment. Yeah, it's awesome. And like you said, that's a big part of this. Because if you look at the representation from years past, it's been a little dodgy.

And with the shuttle program, so much better, so many firsts, like all that sort of stuff. But Artemis is a real specific drive. This is for everyone. We're going with international partners, so that isn't just the United States. We're going with private and public partnerships, so a lot more commercial organizations are a part of this as well. And then just the representation of who is doing this. And the access that people are going to have, it's not going to be a grainy black and white TV that everybody's crowded around. This is going to be in HD. It's going to be incredible. And we're all going to be a part of it. And then for NASA,

I sort of think of myself in the investment wing of NASA. So the point of the Artemis missions is to learn how to go on to Mars. And that foot that leaves the first footprint on Mars is not attached to a person who works for NASA or one of our contractors or even the Planetary Society. It's attached to a kid. It's attached maybe to that little girl waiting for her patches. job with NASA, the job of the engagement wing of NASA is to find that foot and to make sure that they have the opportunities to be inspired, to be excited, to get the STEM background, to get the critical thinking background that they're going to need to make that trip in the late 2030s, early 2040s. During your years working on this program, have you had any moments where you've seen it really make a big impact on the people that you're working with?

Oh, my gosh, yes. So I have the great pleasure of getting to do a lot of public engagement events. So I get to go out and be the face. I kind of get to be the Bill Nye of NASA. I don't know why. Have bow tie, we'll travel. So I get to go to these events and see these young kids discovering this stuff and see them in my favorite part of all of it. I do a long, a long-term project with a friend of mine, Aaron

Maurer, who works in Iowa with their regional organization. And he and I do this project together every year where we work with kids on this idea of survival. And so we start in the past and they do a whole thing on ancient Egypt and how they survived in the desert and the technologies and stuff they created for that. Then we do one for present, which brings in that soccer team from Thailand that was like trapped in the cave and had to survive for the couple of days or something. They talk about that and he's brought in the author of the book about that in the past and then we do future and that's where i come in where we talk about surviving on other planetary

bodies like the moon through artemis missions and eventually mars and i work with these kids for months coming up with an initial idea working through prototypes and then eventually creating a prototype something model that we then talk about. The best part of that is helping them understand the importance of failure. That failure isn't something to be afraid of. It's not something to be avoided. It's something to be embraced. And we talk about learning to fail epically because it's in those failures that creativity and innovation and those sorts of things happened. So without the tragedy of Apollo 1, Apollo's 11 on would not have been the success that they were because we learned so much from that. And so while, of course, you want to be safe and you don't want those kinds of tragedies embrace if you are not doing something

that you might fail at who cares if you're because then you're only doing the easy thing that everybody could do so we push them to try something new to try something that just sounds ridiculous and when they fail okay bring that around what do? Maybe restart. And to a student in that project, every single one of them, when they're asked the thing that was the most impactful for them, it's that. It was that moment that they learned from their failure and pushed past it. And they're so much prouder of themselves. And so I think with NASA, that's one of the things that we bring to bear on that is we work on that edge where things can just go horribly wrong, but that's where innovation and creativity and all of that stuff happens.

And seeing those moments in the kids and being able to bring them that moment and to push them to that moment, it's just incredible. It's, it's second to none and get, I'm so lucky that this is my job. I wish someone had tried to impart that lesson upon me as a child, because I think one of the things that I, myself, and a lot of my friends struggled with was this idea that you can't be a scientist unless you get it right the first time, unless you're perfect, right? But you're going to get it wrong. You're going to struggle. Science, mathematics, engineering, these are hard subjects that necessarily you're not going to get right the first time.

And that's part of the beauty of it. But it was hard to struggle through. Yes. And our schools today are teaching that fear of failure. You know, you have to pass every test. You have to get like this in any person who's ever done any experiment in experiments. The most likely outcome is your null hypothesis. So you have your hypothesis. This is what I think is going to happen. But the most likely thing that's going to

happen is anything but that pretty much. So in real science and real innovation, failure is a huge part of that. And so, yeah, getting to impart that, getting to watch kids go through that and run into the issue and it didn't work. And how do I figure my way around it? And then that moment of aha discovery, it's just, ah, it's good stuff. What are some of your favorite projects that you've gotten to work on with people over the years? So I really love that project to work on with my friend, Aaron. That's so much fun because it's such a long-term project and I get to be a part of all of it. I also have gotten to, we have an internal project that's now called Spark. Previously, it was our hackathon.

And so people from other areas would come to a central place and like, hey, we're working on these issues and having a little problem. Let's brainstorm this. Let's crowdsource this. And so I actually got to design a chair that's going to the moon. So something that was in my brain will be under an astronaut's butt. So I'm very excited about that. And then just getting to go out and work in areas like I got to spend a week going between the Hopi Zuni and Navajo reservations in northern New Mexico, and seeing those kids

understand that the traditional ways of living in the desert and the things that their families have done for thousands of years are things that we're thinking about for surviving on the moon and on Mars and in long-term spacecraft. The validation that that brings is really pretty incredible. Getting to work in the valley in Texas, which is what we call the South-South part of Texas. And I got to be in front of 5,000 teachers in an arena with me on the Jumbotron on my birthday. That was incredible. It's things like that for me, getting to go out and make those real connections and work with an educator who is kind of beaten down, kind of tired. who is kind of beaten down, kind of tired, and then help re-inspire the teacher and knowing that that teacher is going to reach out and then inspire their kids because they're excited about

something I said. And it's just, it's, it's stupid that they pay me to do this. Although please keep paying me to do this. If you're listening, NASA, thank you. Just because you're passionate doesn't mean you don't got to eat. I love that you bring up that you got to go to these reservations, the Native American reservations to go share this because one of the programs I I've been looking through a lot of the STEM programs, particularly within the Artemis challenges. And there was this beautiful one about a First Nations launch program. And I spent a little time actually on a Navajo reservation. There's some Native American blood

in my family. So I'd love to hear more about that program and all of the other ones. I mean, honestly, we could talk for hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the First Nations launch is just what it sounds like. So we have tribal colleges and universities all over the country. And this is a program specific to them to really encourage this. I work with a group that actually works in Canada called Stardust, and their specific mission is reaching into First Nations in Canada and in these communities that

are heavy logging or heavy mining, or where you get this sort of like generational poverty areas and showing them like, hey, aerospace is here and something that you could be a part of. And then we have a whole wing called MAINSE. It's M-A-I-A-N-S-E. Again, an acronym for a bunch of words to sound cool. But that is an entire program at NASA focused just on Native American and Alaska Natives and all of the needs and working on the reservations and bringing things to them and celebrating their traditional ways as part of what we're doing, you know, because space is universal, pun intended, but every culture has their stories about the moon, about the stars, about the constellations. And it's something that we as a people have done throughout all of history. And then we also get this the astronauts or

anybody who's been to space comes back with this global perspective having seen earth from a different perspective like that it's much less us and them and you can't really see those borders and all that sort of stuff and they get this this very we the people of earth kind of feeling when they come back and native americans have had that as part of their culture for ever. Most Native American names for their particular tribe are translate to the people. When you have, well, who are we? Well, we're the people, duh. And so we embrace that and we really encourage that.

And I'm getting to on January 25th of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. They're doing a STEM day and they do that every year. And it's just a huge celebration bringing in their kids. And I think they bring something like a thousand kids on that day through in two big sections. And I get to be a part of that as well. We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Stephen Smith after this short break. Greetings, Bill Nye here. How would you like to join me for the next total solar eclipse in the Texas Hill Country this coming April at the Planetary Society's Eclipsorama? That's right, I'll fly you and a guest to Texas and you'll have VIP access to all things Eclipsorama, talks on astronomy, planetary science, captivating exhibits,

star parties, and more. To enter, go to eclipsewithbill.com. Donate $10 or more for your chance to win. You don't want to miss this because the next Total Solar Eclipse doesn't come through here until 2045. So don't let time slip away. Enter today and good luck. You mentioned earlier that that specific program is catered toward undergrad and graduate students in college. So this program covers everything from kindergarten all the way up to people that are just beginning to start their careers. How do these programs kind of vary by age group? It's sort of a difference in degree, not kind sort of thing. So the programs and projects we have for the elementary three through five students

is really not vastly different than what we have through nine through 12, but it has more variables or less variables or a little deeper dive, or it's a little bit more of a, like, you know, here's the original thing kind of built from that versus like start from scratch kind of thing. So a lot of the things that we create with our educator guides with,

we have fully written activities. And by the way, everything that we have for education type resources are standards aligned with the next generation science standards and the Common Core curriculum. We do that because we're national. And while each state may have its own standards, those standards are also based on the federal standards. So we just went to the root.

But those are all similar across the board. But what's expected of the student is a little different. So with the younger kids, we maybe give them a little more information at the start and ask them to figure out one or two pieces. Whereas my 9-12 students, it's, you know, here's the blank slate. Here's your variables, go kind of thing. And then with the college students, it's a lot more real world in that they actually create a product that we may use here at NASA. The program that I was working on Micro G Next, we have our engineers come to us with challenges. We put those challenges together, then put them out to students. This year, we have one called Spotter, where they're going to code and do the electronical engineering for a device that will find the Orion spacecraft, like when it's in

high ocean conditions, that kind of thing. Then we have one where they're developing more of a mechanical engineering side, where they're developing a flagpole anchor. You may remember that one of our Apollo flags, as the Apollo lander took off, got blown over from the exhaust. Well, we want to make sure that doesn't happen again. That's kind of a bad video. So we have them designing that. And then also like a map holder and there's a tool holder. And the students will create actual prototypes that will be tested in our neutral buoyancy lab, which you may or may not know is a huge swimming pool where we train astronauts how to do spacewalks. In the testing facility where we test these things, they'll build the prototype, bring it in there, work on it.

And then our engineers will take pieces and parts of that. And some of the things that students designed will be on the moon as part of Artemis. We have other programs like Suits, which is building a heads up display for the astronauts when they do their spacewalks. And so many other challenges. Akibo, they build and work with robots in the Japanese section. Just so many opportunities and challenges. Again, all the way from kindergarten, where we have books for them to read that have challenges. And students doing a little experiment. But then that experiment is in the book for the teachers. And so your students can do the experiment that they just read about the students in the book doing kind of thing. And then our globe challenges. We have this whole earth science based section where your students can do real hands on science.

And they're working with our NASA scientists, as well as scientists from NOAA and the National Science Foundation, NSF. But they're doing real science. But again, it's a difference in degrees and how much from, you know, did you start from scratch or did you jump onto somebody else's and that sort of thing. And the people who work in my field, we're all educators. So we've all been there. We've all been where you are kind of thing as educators and parents and all of that out there looking for stuff for your kids. And let me say, too, if you're just a parent and you want extra stuff for your kids, you want some things for your kids to do, or God forbid, we end up in another shutdown lockdown like we were during the pandemic. These are all online. You can go to NASA.gov slash STEM.

And all of those things and all those resources are broken up by grade level. And you can just look across and see what you can go to nasa.gov slash STEM. And all of those things and all those resources are broken up by grade level. And you can just look across and see what you can do with your students. You bring up a great point too, which is that, you know, we've just been through a huge upheaval across the world with the COVID era. How did that impact the program? It really, it changed a lot, just like it did with everybody, because we were stuck in our houses just like everybody else was. So we really doubled down on that, though, and created resources that you could use at home. And so we have a lot of activities, a lot of hands-on STEM engagement stuff that you can do with things that you just find around your house. And again, that's all on nasa.gov

slash STEM, broken out by GradeBand, but they're right there for you. We created videos to kind of walk you through how to do these things. We really kind of doubled down on that. And then, you know, with a really increased our webinar offerings and things like that. So you can participate from home. And now that we're out of that a little bit, we still, it changed us as a nation. It changed all of us to help us understand how this kind of technology works. And now we're all on Teams and Zoom and working part time from home is kind of a normal thing to do now. And so we still have those resources available and we have whole sections where you can just put your kids on it. If you go to NASA.gov slash STEM, there's a whole section just that's just for kids and students and they can just explore there. And then my favorite part of all of that is our search engine, the little

search bar up there. You type in one word from anything you're interested in relating to STEM, to space, to whatever, and you're going to get 400 different things that pop up that are free NASA resources that you can just play with. That's so fun. As the wacky space auntie, I love having all of these resources because it means I can like share them with all the little people in my life. Absolutely. Am I remembering correctly that the MicroGNX program just had a 10-year anniversary? Is that true? This year. This year is 10-year. And then we have the HERC challenge, which is the Human Exploration Rover Challenge. I remember that one.

That is a middle and high school international event where students are creating a human-powered vehicle to go through an obstacle course. That's on its 30th year. So we've been doing this a minute. That's interesting too. NASA is a United States space agency or aerospace agency. But we have so many partners around the world. And there are kids and people in college all across this planet that want to get involved in these things. Do you have any advice for people in other countries who want to get involved in these programs? Absolutely. So many other countries are now gearing up their own space agencies.

So the Indian Space Agency just successfully landed on the moon for the first time. Chandrayaan-3. So cool. Incredible. Up to that point, the United States was the only one to do it successfully. So these partners are coming in. And so their space agency is in their home country. So the European Space agency is a,

is a huge partner of ours. The Canadian space agency, huge partner of ours, JAXA, which is the Japanese space agency, Ross cosmos. These are all people who regularly send astronauts to the space station on our missions are part of the Artemis,

like all of us. So if you're an international person, missions are part of the Artemis, like all of us. So if you're an international person, find out what the space agency where you are is and what they've got going on now. Okay. Let's be honest. They're not going to be as cool as NASA. We are the cool ones. I get it. I get it. So we actually do have internships for international students. So if you go to intern.nasa.gov, and by the way, all of these things I'm throwing out, if you can't remember the exact URL, just Google NASA and the thing you're interested in. We're kind of a big deal. We come to the top. And to make it easier for everyone,

I'm going to take these links and put them on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio, so you can just go click them. Perfect. I had a feeling you might. So intern.nasa.gov is our had a feeling you might. So intern.nasa.gov is our internships website. And we do have, for US students, we do have some for high school. There's not a lot. It is mostly for graduate, undergraduate students. The graduate students, the specific program is called Pathways. And we call it that because those are pathways to actual jobs. So you're kind of interviewing for your job while you're doing the job sort of thing. And then for international students, we actually do have international partnerships and international internships through intern.nasa.gov that you can go and look at

as well. Then with our engagement opportunities, so if you're a young person, not in college yet, and just want to involve yourself in some of our webinars or go on to nasa.gov slash stem and look at our great resources there those are all if you have the interwebs you have access to that there's not like a gate that you have to go through and show your green card or birth certificate or anything like that so those are all available to you now some of the challenges like micro g next if the culminating event for that challenge is coming onto a center, you do have to be a US citizen for that or a legal permanent resident, I think is the term for the other. But other than that, you can participate. You can be a part of these things that are happening. But I would say the first step though is check in your

local area with your local space agency, whatever that is, because they're going to need new, young, amazing people as well to get them started. And then also in the private industry, we've got SpaceX and Boeing and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic and all of these others that are just the pioneers in a newly developing private space economy. So I fully believe within the lifetime of people listening to this podcast, that there's going to be a time where you have to make a genuine decision, whether you go to Disney in Orlando, Disney in California, or Disney in orbit. That is all happening. And it's all happening soon. Can you imagine the Star Wars section of Disney in space? Yes, as a matter of fact, I can.

I want to go to there. Yes. Now, for me, that's not really going to be my bag because I would just be nauseous the whole time. I know I've got one good roller coaster in me a day. That's it. And so I don't know if that's in my future, but definitely my kids, for sure. There are so many of these projects that I want to learn more about, particularly within the Artemis challenges or the Artemis student challenges. This is just like a really cool moment for people to get involved in what is going to be our next human travel to the moon. You already brought up a few of them, but one that I was really interested in was the spacesuit user interface technology thing.

It's probably because I've been doing a lot of VR and augmented reality around my house. It's not an uncommon thing for one of us to be wearing an Oculus while doing dishes. I know that's super strange, but it feels like a really cool new way to overlay over our reality. And if we're going to have some cool new Iron Man-esque display in our spacesuits, I think these young people are going to be up for it. I agree. And we've even integrated that. If you read our first woman graphic novel, throughout there are QR codes and things where you go to and scan and there's a VR and AR component to the novel. Not only sending you to other resources, but to actual virtual

reality experiences just for that novel. And if you have an Oculus, we have a ton of things that you can download, different tours and things of NASA facilities and launches and the Neutral Buoyancy Lab that you can watch on your Oculus. I will suggest though, if you're going to watch something like that, sit down while you're doing it. Because the chances of you just following it all the way and then falling down, pretty high. It's pretty common that that happens. But suits, which is the one you were talking about, the student user interface, which, by the way, I named it. Nice.

Now you need an offshoot section called ties. Yes, suits and ties. I love it. My friend Brandon Hargis was tasked with that. And he and I kind of brainstormed and the two of us came up with the name. And he was the original manager for that and kind of led it through and made it what it is. But the group now is incredible as well. And the partnerships in that are what make me excited because the teams they put together for that aren't just coders. It's not just the electrical engineer side, but they often will have people from public affairs backgrounds or people from those kind of things.

Almost all of our challenges have an outreach component where we're looking for you to get on into your community, tell other people about it, get kids excited about what you're doing, that kind of thing. that kind of thing. And so they would bring in people from other majors that were non-STEM related necessarily and have them partner in that, which is, by the way, the same thing that NASA does. We have our public affairs people. We have our student engagement people like myself. They're all part of the story as well. And even in these challenges, you can do that. You can put together these integrated teams. And then a lot of the teams on Suits and MicroGNX and all those, they will partner with students from other schools. And so you have these really cool multi-school branch out groups that come together to answer this question. And the exciting thing about that is that most of these things aren't competitions. So you're not going to get a cupid all at the end of the road. These are collaborations. It's about solving the problems, about coming up with the best answer and however you need to do that and whomever you need to partner with to make that happen. of collaboration versus competition, which I think if we think about that in a political sense,

if we think about that in an economic sense, there's a lot of crossover where getting young people to think collaboratively and get away from this idea of zero-sum games and I only win if you lose, I think that gives us benefits way out into the future. I've even seen that kind of make a big impact in my community and the astrophysics community over the last few years. When I was doing my research, there was a lot of this competition between research groups and it still exists. They're all grappling for grant funding, but then people started sharing their algorithms and other things online and just the speed with which innovation and new discoveries is being made because people are now collaborating in a whole new way in a less

competitive way is absolutely mind-boggling absolutely true if you if you look at the photograph that we the first photograph that we were able to successfully get of the black hole oh yeah only happened because of that huge collaboration between scientific partners and schools all over the world, sharing their data, sharing their algorithms and working together to create that thing that just changed everything. The Event Horizon Telescope is so mind blowing. But really, though, I mean, there are so many things now that we can finally accomplish because of this interconnectivity, because we can place telescopes all around the world or collaborate together to take more nations into space. And we're going to need a lot more people, a lot more kids and a lot more students to get involved in order to continue these programs, because our dreams are big and we're going to need people to help make them real. Yes. And then we need organizations like NASA, like the Planetary Society and like many others. And most of these new commercial companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX are integrating in student engagement. Blue Origin does a cool thing where you can send a postcard up to space and then it comes back to you. Oh, yeah. We actually partner with them on that sometimes. So if anybody ever sees one of our booths at any space event, we'll probably have space postcards that you can send to space and

get them back to your home, which is so fun seeing the look on kids' faces when they get to send a piece of their own artwork to space. Absolutely. And we're investing. We're investing in ourselves. You're investing in your company. You're investing in all of us as a people by doing these kind of outreach things. And it really does take all of us to make this work. As part of the Micro-G Next program, you're not only doing things on the lunar surface, but you're also trying to think about the Orion's crew safety upon returning. I know you mentioned a little bit that one program to try to create a thing that will autonomously track the Orion capsule, but are there other programs within that to help bring our astronauts home safely? Absolutely. Yeah. We have a whole wing

for that. Cody Kelly is the microgene next subject matter expert. He's the one working with us on that. And so last year, we had an autonomous vehicle that would actually search out and find a beacon that would be on the astronauts if they were in trouble kind of thing. And then this year, that program is called Spotter that we're doing with MicroGNX, where they're creating the autonomous tracking device to find the Orion when it's in. Because apparently, even being international orange and huge, it can get a little tricky to find these things out in the open ocean. So, yes, and our amazing search and rescue folks work with the Coast Guard and the Navy out there to make sure that we find our people and bring them back.

That's a huge part of our mission. Anytime we talk about sending people, there's always that second half. We want to bring them back safely. Anytime we talk about sending people, there's always that second half. We want to bring them back safely. So yes, they're a part of MicroGNX and several other of our organizations as well, getting students involved. But then the work that they do is just second to none. That's really important to work with the astronauts.

Are there any other big branches of the STEM program that you want to highlight? Because I feel like we could literally talk about this all day and never hit the bottom of these projects. Yeah. So like I said before, just with our engagement section, our STEM engagement section, we have all the challenges that we've talked about. So we have MITIC, M-I-T-I-C,

which is sort of like a shark tank kind of thing. We call it space tank. It's for minority serving universities specifically. And they take existing NASA technology and create new products that would help their community and then pitch them to our panel here on the center, which is pretty cool. MicroGNX, we've talked about. Suits, we've talked about. Kibo is a collaboration with the Japanese space agency JAXA. And it's a robotics focused for young people

to code for the robots to do different cool things. And that's kind of a competition where the lead ones will actually get to go to Japan and do work there. That's pretty cool. It's going. I know, right? You have the app development challenge, which is for middle and high school students. And this year they're creating visualization data packets for helping us decide where on the South pole exactly to land. So it's taking all of the, you know, where's the water, what's the topography, all those things in creating a visualization for us to use to help decide where to land. And that's just for middle and high school students. And the stuff that they

came up with is ridiculous. But all of those challenges are kind of together doing their thing. And then while they're doing that, we've got our student engagement team that's out there talking to kids and getting them excited. We have our educator professional development team that's out there with the teachers and getting them excited and kind of doing the train the trainer sort of thing with them sparks we have for all those teams that are a little nervous about maybe jumping into an app development challenge or maybe nervous about some of that good entry level to get you in there and just doing some cool nasa stuff then we have our big teams with aerospace getting ready to create a supersonic plane that will fly faster than the speed of sound without a sonic boom. It only has a sonic whoomp.

So it'll be able to fly over land without breaking the law. So that technology will maybe roll into someday getting you from California out here to hang out with me in Houston in like 45 minutes instead of the four hours that it takes to do it. I'm still here for that. Right? Our Earth team doing amazing things, still working with the ISS and with Earth science, climate science. We have something really cool with that. If your organization is interested in having a moon tree.

So we actually flew seeds to space, brought those seeds back and have created seedlings and trees and your organization can apply to get and have created seedlings and trees in your organization can apply to get one of these seedlings and you can grow a tree that's been to the moon. That's so cool. It is so cool. I'll have to bring it up with Bill Nye. We'll get one of those trees. You should oughta and grow with a bow tie, of course.

My good friend John Davis is the lead on that one. And then just, oh, and we have STEM demonstrations. So we have really cool things. If you're teaching Newton's laws or if you're teaching communication or you're teaching whatever, we have videos done by the astronauts demonstrating those concepts in space for students.

So it doesn't get cooler than that. Then we have downlinks. So if your school wants to talk to astronauts while they're in space, we have downlinks where you if your school wants to talk to astronauts while they're in space, we have downlinks where you can sign up and have that happen. Then on moon, that's all the Artemis stuff, the Artemis student challenges, all the things we've talked about. And then solar system and beyond is looking at the James Webb Space Telescope and the

various cool things we have coming back and that we're learning from that. So we are here doing it all. And wherever you are, there's probably a NASA center close. There are 10 centers. It's not just Houston. There where you are in California, there are three centers. We have JPL, Ames, and Armstrong all right there together going up the coast. Then of course, us here in Houston, Johnson Space Center, the home of human spaceflight. We have astronauts, so we're the coolest, obviously. Mississippi has one. Alabama has one. Florida is where we launch everything from. We have headquarters in Washington, D.C., Goddard in Maryland, Langley in Virginia,

and then way up there in Ohio, we even have one in Cleveland, which is the Glenn Research Center. So we are where you are. And again, whatever your jam is, you don't have to be an astronaut. You don't have to want to be an astronaut. You don't have to be an engineer. You just have to love space, be good at what you're doing and be excited about it. And we want you to come and hang out with us and have shenanigans and learn stuff. It's going to be great. I'm so glad this program exists. Even just the few years ago that I was a child, I remember thinking that I wanted to do this, but I didn't know how to get involved or how to do anything beyond just reading about it. And now you can get yourself involved, actually do stuff that really matters. And imagine being one of those people that got to help put a flagpole on the moon, a next generation robot on the moon, anything like that could change the arc of someone's life. It can. And there's some ways for you to keep up with that. So if you're an educator,

even informal educator, which I would, I would pull you in there, Sarah, you're an informal educator. We have something called NASA Connects, which is an online community for educators in the United States. And we have resources on there. We have groups that you can become a part of, whatever your jam is in there. We do special events just for in there. Have the astronauts come in and talk every once in a while. That's a great collaborative community that you can just be a part of. If you're not sure how to get started in some of this other stuff, it's a good kind of entry level sort of thing. And then we also have NASA Express. So if you're

interested in this kind of stuff, but again, don't know how to start, sign up for NASA Express and you get emails every month that tell you, here's all the webinars that are coming up. Here's the challenges that are coming up. Here's the way to get involved with the stuff that's happening. We just had an eclipse that was an annular eclipse that went across the country. And in April, we have a full eclipse that's coming on. So there's going to be lots of events and lots of activities

and lots of ways for you to get involved with that. And those are all going to be on Connects and NASA Express or just go again to nasa.gov slash STEM and check out the amazing offerings that we have there as well. And now's a good time

to become an eclipse ambassador. Exactly right. And go ahead and get your glasses early because they will sell out. If you try to go to Home Depot or one of those places on the day of, they're not going to be there. Believe me. I know. I did it for the annual eclipse. Oops.

Yeah. I always keep a bag of them. So when the annual eclipse was happening, it was only a partial from here in California, but I felt like a superhero sailing out there. I gave eclipse glasses to everyone. Just you get a pair and you get a pair. It's in your upbringing. Exactly. And you get an eclipse glasses. Everybody gets eclipse. But really though, buy a bag full of them. You're going to be the superhero that everyone needs. A hundred percent.

Well, thanks so much for joining me, Stephen, and explaining all of this. And I'm sure even just the few people that are listening to this right now are about to have their minds completely blown and potentially changed by these opportunities. So thanks for sharing this with us and for spending so much time trying to educate and inspire the next generation. It's going to make a huge difference. It is a great honor to get to do what I do. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks, Sarah.

As Stephen said, somewhere out there right now is a student who has no idea that they're going to be the first person on Mars. Let's do everything that we can to help them make that dream a reality. If you want to learn more about any of the opportunities mentioned in this show, you can find them on the page for this episode of Planetary Radio at planetary.org slash radio, or just straight up email us at planetary radio at planetary.org. We'll get you the links you need. I should also mention that the day that this episode comes out, November 15th, 2023, is also the one year anniversary of the launch of the Planetary Society's Kids Membership Program, the Planetary Academy. It's designed for kids ages five through nine who love space, want to learn more, and want to help in our collective mission to advance space science

and exploration. You can learn more about that at planetary.org slash academy. Now, let's check in with the Chief Scientist of the Planetary Society and a master of science education for kids, Bruce Betts. Hey, Bruce. Hey, Sarah. How are you doing today? Doing good. Anytime I get to talk about all the ways that we can inspire people, especially children, to get involved in space exploration or learning more about space science, it always makes me really happy. Because I know what a difference all those programs and all the adults who reached out to me

as a kid really made. And I'm wondering, did you become interested in space as a kid or were you one of the people that found that passion later in life? No, I found it very early. So I was interested from a few years of age, couple of significant things. One was watching from a distance, but the final launch of Apollo to the Moon, Apollo 17, from a hotel in Florida.

And that was profound. And then I had a second, third cousin who worked at JPL, and it was the days before the Internet. So he would send me packages of the press release photos of Viking and Voyager. And that's what got me really fired up. Pretty pictures. Still love them to this day. And so those were kind of the two pivotal things. And then just books that taught me more about it and time travel to the future and using the internet and then traveling back. The usual. The usual. One of our members, Gene Lewin, sent in a poem about the Viking missions that I thought was really beautiful. I would like to hear it. Yeah. And it's cool because another person actually

wrote me today saying that they wished more people knew about the Viking landers and their tests and search for life. So it was perfect. But here is Gene Lewin's poem about the Viking landers and their tests and search for life. So it was perfect. But here is Gene Lewin's poem about Viking landers. Off to Martian surfaces, a Titan centaur proved the way, with orbiters and landers to last for 90 days. Twin galactic longships, Vikings 1 and 2, searching for the signs of life as the mission so ensued. Alas, nothing definitive, though if I were to decide when you see Vikings come ashore, it would be wise to hide. Instead of staying there on Mars, the Martians had a plan. They pulled up stakes and came to Earth and mingled among man. The landers, when they both touched down, used a Dacron polyester chute.

The Martians may have upcycled it, explaining those folks in leisure suits. You see, it was the 70s, and with fashion ebbs and flows, Martians were hiding in plain sight in those casual pastel clothes. Nice. sell clothes. Nice. Nah, man, I am looking forward to a day when we can go back to Mars thoughtfully, carefully, and do these experiments again. Because what happened with those Viking landers,

if you're out there listening and you don't know, their experiments for life were very fascinating. Very, what is the word? They couldn't determine whether or not there's actually current life on Mars, extant life at the moment. But they did provide some really big mysteries that I want to go back and learn more about. Okay. One instrument and a small set of people claim there is evidence for life, but there is plenty of evidence that it was a non-biological release.

And the others are pretty negative. non-biological release. Totally. And the others are pretty negative. But yeah, it was a weird way to start Mars landed exploration to focus entirely on we will send a mission that looks for life and looks for life and looks for life, which now we've got a much more methodical way of surveying the planet, figuring out good places to look for evidence of past life, which is far more likely, particularly on the surface, figuring out good places to look for evidence of past life, which is far more likely, particularly on the surface, because we've learned the surface is pretty nasty,

not compared to my friend Venus I'll talk about. I've called Venus my friend before. I'm sorry, Mars. Anyway, yeah, there are... It'll be nice and it'll be great if and when we get the samples back from the surface of Mars, which have been taken and are being taken by Perseverance because that'll allow us to go crazy in Earth laboratories with much more advanced techniques. Right. You think we're going to learn stuff from the moon samples and the Osiris-Rex rocks and all those things. But, oh, my gosh, the things we could learn from those Martian samples

once we get them. Hopefully we get them. And if anybody wants to support the Mars sample return mission, we have a petition going on on our Action Center. So I'm going to link for that on this episode of Planetary Radio.

That way, if you want to kick in your vote behind actually bringing those samples back from Mars, we'll make sure it gets to the right people who can hear that. How about we travel to Venus and I'll give you a... All right, let's go to Venus. All right, Venus. Probably no sulfur dioxide clouds. That's what makes it so we can't see the surface. Pretty exotic, pretty wild, pretty nasty. But people often picture, I think, when they hear sulfur dioxide acid rain that is coming down on the surface. But it actually,

the clouds are up tens of kilometers, and then it rains, and sulfuric acid evaporates around 300 degrees Celsius, which means you easily hit places where it evaporates and then goes back to the clouds and recondenses. So there is a cycle, but it never reaches the surface. So the surface is quite enjoyably pleasant, I mean, except for the crushing pressures and melting temperatures. But other than that, it's good. No acid rain. Yay. Yeah.

See, that actually explains a lot because I remember the first time I was looking through the Soviet Venera images of the surface of Venus. I remember thinking, but where are the pools of sulfuric acid? Because at the time I was younger, I didn't know that the rain didn't reach the surface. And I kept thinking, like, why aren't there entire lakes of this stuff? That sounds horrifying. Oh, there are, but they're in my backyard. Keep the dogs inside. All right, everybody,

go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about fruit. Thank you, and good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with the latest adventures of Planetary Radio's creator, Matt Kaplan, and a conversation with Nathaniel Kahn, the Oscar-nominated director of Deep Sky, the new James Webb Space Telescope IMAX experience. You can help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review and a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts.

Your feedback not only brightens our day, but also helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Or, if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by our members who want to help shape a bright future for students everywhere.

You can join us as we work together to explore the moon, Mars, and beyond at planetary.org slash join. Mark Helverta and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. And until next week, Ad Astra.