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Desktop Modeling and Simulation: Parsimonious, yet Effective Discrete-Event Simulation Analysis

This paper evaluates how quickly students can be trained to construct useful discrete-event simulation models using Excel The typical supply chain used by many large national retailers is described, and an Excel-based simulation model is constructed of it The set of programming and simulation skills required for development of that model are then determined we conclude that six hours of training are required to teach the skills to MBA students . The simulation presented here contains all fundamental functionallty of a simulation model, and so our result holds for any discrete-event simulation model. We argue therefore that Industry workers with the same technical skill set as students having completed one year in an MBA program can be quickly trained to construct simulation models. This result gives credence to the efficacy of Desktop Modeling and Simulation whereby simulation analyses can be quickly developed, run, and analyzed with widely available software, namely Excel.

Bradley, James R.↗

ExMC Technology Watch

The Technology Watch (Tech Watch) project is a NASA project that is operated under the Human Research Programs (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) element, and focuses on ExMC technology gaps. The project coordinates the efforts of several NASA centers, including the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Glenn Research Center (GRC), Ames Research Center (ARC), and the Langley Research Center (LaRC). The objective of Tech Watch is to identify emerging, high-impact technologies that augment current NASA HRP technology development efforts. Identifying such technologies accelerates the development of medical care and research capabilities for the mitigation of potential health issues encountered during human space exploration missions. The aim of this process is to leverage technologies developed by academia, industry and other government agencies and to identify the effective utilization of NASA resources to maximize the HRP return on investment. The establishment of collaborations with these entities is beneficial to technology development, assessment and/or insertion and further NASAs goal to provide a safe and healthy environment for human exploration. In 2012, the Tech Watch project expanded the scope of activities to cultivate student projects targeted at specific ExMC gaps, generate gap reports for a majority of the ExMC gaps and maturate a gap report review process to optimize the technical and managerial aspects of ExMC gap status. Through numerous site visits and discussions with academia faculty, several student projects were initiated and/or completed this past year. A key element to these student projects was the ability of the project to align with a specific ExMC technology or knowledge gap. These projects were mentored and reviewed by Tech Watch leads at the various NASA centers. Another result of the past years efforts was the population of the ExMC wiki website that now contains more the three quarters of the ExMC gap reports. The remaining gap reports will be completed in FY13. Finally, the gap report review process for all ExMC gaps was initiated. This review process was instrumental in ensuring that each gap report was thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and relevant content prior to its public release. In the upcoming year, the gap report review process will be refined such that in addition to the gap report update, programmatic information related to gap closure will also be emphasized.

Krihak, M.↗

2009 ESMD Space Grant Faculty Project Final Report

The Constellation Program is the medium by which we will maintain a presence in low Earth orbit, return to the moon for further exploration and develop procedures for Mars exploration. The foundation for its presence and success is built by the many individuals that have given of their time, talent and even lives to help propel the mission and objectives of NASA. The Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) Faculty Fellows Program is a direct contributor to the success of directorate and Constellation Program objectives. It is through programs such as the ESMD Space Grant program that students are inspired and challenged to achieve the technological heights that will propel us to meet the goals and objectives of ESMD and the Constellation Program. It is through ESMD Space Grant programs that future NASA scientists, engineers, and mathematicians begin to dream of taking America to newer heights of space exploration. The ESMD Space Grant program is to be commended for taking the initiative to develop and implement programs that help solidify the mission of NASA. With the concerted efforts of the Kennedy Space Center educational staff, the 2009 ESMD Space Grant Summer Faculty Fellows Program allowed faculty to become more involved with NASA personnel relating to exploration topics for the senior design projects. The 2009 Project was specifically directed towards NASA's Strategic Educational Outcome 1. In-situ placement of Faculty Fellows at the NASA field Centers was essential; this allowed personal interactions with NASA scientists and engineers. In particular, this was critical to better understanding the NASA problems and begin developing a senior design effort to solve the problems. The Faculty Fellows are pleased that the ESMD Space Grant program is taking interest in developing the Senior Design courses at the university level. These courses are needed to help develop the NASA engineers and scientists of the very near future. It has been a pleasure to be part of the evaluation process to help ensure that these courses are developed in such a way that the students' educational objectives are maximized. Ultimately, with NASA-related content used as projects in the course, students will be exposed to space exploration concepts and issues while still in college. This will help to produce NASA engineers and scientists that are knowledgeable of space exploration. By the concerted efforts of these five senior design projects, NASA's ESMD Space Grant Project is making great strides at helping to develop talented engineers and scientists that will continue our exploration into space.

Murphy, Gloria↗

CanSat Competition: Contributing to the Development of NASA's Vision for Robotic Space Exploration

CanSat is an international student design-build-launch competition organized by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The competition is also sponsored by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The CanSat competition is designed for college, university and high school students wanting to participate in an applicable space-related competition. The objective of the CanSat competition is to complete space exploration missions by designing a specific system for a small sounding rocket payload which will follow and perform to a specific set of rules and guidelines for each year's competition. The competition encompasses a complete life-cycle of one year which includes all phases of design, integration, testing, judging and competition. The mission guidelines are based from space exploration missions and include bonus requirement options which teams may choose to participate in. The fundamental goal of the competition is to educate future engineers and scientists. This is accomplished by students applying systems engineering practices to a development project that incorporates an end-to-end life cycle, from requirements analysis, through preliminary design, integration and testing, an actual flight of the CanSat, and concluding with a post-mission debrief. This is done specifically with space related missions to bring a unique aspect of engineering and design to the competition. The competition has been progressing since its creation in 2005. The competition was originally meant to purely convey the engineering and design process to its participants, but through many experiences the competition has also undergone a learning experience with respect to systems engineering process and design. According

Berman, Joshua↗

Adaptive Distributed Environment for Procedure Training (ADEPT)

ADEPT (Adaptive Distributed Environment for Procedure Training) is designed to provide more effective, flexible, and portable training for NASA systems controllers. When creating a training scenario, an exercise author can specify a representative rationale structure using the graphical user interface, annotating the results with instructional texts where needed. The author's structure may distinguish between essential and optional parts of the rationale, and may also include "red herrings" - hypotheses that are essential to consider, until evidence and reasoning allow them to be ruled out. The system is built from pre-existing components, including Stottler Henke's SimVentive instructional simulation authoring tool and runtime. To that, a capability was added to author and exploit explicit control decision rationale representations. ADEPT uses SimVentive's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)- based interactive graphic display capability as the basis of the tool for quickly noting aspects of decision rationale in graph form. The ADEPT prototype is built in Java, and will run on any computer using Windows, MacOS, or Linux. No special peripheral equipment is required. The software enables a style of student/ tutor interaction focused on the reasoning behind systems control behavior that better mimics proven Socratic human tutoring behaviors for highly cognitive skills. It supports fast, easy, and convenient authoring of such tutoring behaviors, allowing specification of detailed scenario-specific, but content-sensitive, high-quality tutor hints and feedback. The system places relatively light data-entry demands on the student to enable its rationale-centered discussions, and provides a support mechanism for fostering coherence in the student/ tutor dialog by including focusing, sequencing, and utterance tuning mechanisms intended to better fit tutor hints and feedback into the ongoing context.

Domeshek, Eric↗

Educational NASA Computational and Scientific Studies (enCOMPASS)

Educational NASA Computational and Scientific Studies (enCOMPASS) is an educational project of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center aimed at bridging the gap between computational objectives and needs of NASA's scientific research, missions, and projects, and academia's latest advances in applied mathematics and computer science. enCOMPASS achieves this goal via bidirectional collaboration and communication between NASA and academia. Using developed NASA Computational Case Studies in university computer science/engineering and applied mathematics classes is a way of addressing NASA's goals of contributing to the Science, Technology, Education, and Math (STEM) National Objective. The enCOMPASS Web site at http://encompass.gsfc.nasa.gov provides additional information. There are currently nine enCOMPASS case studies developed in areas of earth sciences, planetary sciences, and astrophysics. Some of these case studies have been published in AIP and IEEE's Computing in Science and Engineering magazines. A few university professors have used enCOMPASS case studies in their computational classes and contributed their findings to NASA scientists. In these case studies, after introducing the science area, the specific problem, and related NASA missions, students are first asked to solve a known problem using NASA data and past approaches used and often published in a scientific/research paper. Then, after learning about the NASA application and related computational tools and approaches for solving the proposed problem, students are given a harder problem as a challenge for them to research and develop solutions for. This project provides a model for NASA scientists and engineers on one side, and university students, faculty, and researchers in computer science and applied mathematics on the other side, to learn from each other's areas of work, computational needs and solutions, and the latest advances in research and development. This innovation takes NASA science and engineering applications to computer science and applied mathematics university classes, and makes NASA objectives part of the university curricula. There is great potential for growth and return on investment of this program to the point where every major university in the U.S. would use at least one of these case studies in one of their computational courses, and where every NASA scientist and engineer facing a computational challenge (without having resources or expertise to solve it) would use enCOMPASS to formulate the problem as a case study, provide it to a university, and get back their solutions and ideas.

Memarsadeghi, Nargess↗

The Space Microbe Invasion: To Eat or Not to Eat

Objective: To investigate how different cleaning agents sanitize an assortment of vegetables and fruits for ~nsumption on board the International Space Station (ISS). -Description: This laboratory investigation will have students testing different cleaning agents on a variety of vegetables and fruits that can be grown on board the ISS. Students will determine which cleaning agent most effectively lowers the number of bacteria on a variety of vegetables and fruits. This lab will also lend itself to investigations dealing with pH and its' role in lowering bacterial counts. In addition, students will figure out the correct balance between plant architecture and effectiveness of sanitizing these surfaces to achieve lower bacteria counts. This will be determined based on swabbed bacteria samples later grown on a Petri dish.

Munoz, Angela↗

Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE): Overview, Accomplishments and Future Needs

Materials and devices used on the exterior of spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) are subjected to environmental threats that can cause degradation in material properties, possibly threatening spacecraft mission success. These threats include: atomic oxygen (AO), ultraviolet and x-ray radiation, charged particle radiation, temperature extremes and thermal cycling, micrometeoroid and debris impacts, and contamination. Space environmental threats vary greatly based on spacecraft materials, thicknesses and stress levels, and the mission environment and duration. For more than a decade the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) has enabled the study of the long duration environmental durability of spacecraft materials in the LEO environment. The overall objective of MISSE is to test the stability and durability of materials and devices in the space environment in order to gain valuable knowledge on the performance of materials in space, as well as to enable lifetime predictions of new materials that may be used in future space flight. MISSE is a series of materials flight experiments, which are attached to the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS). Individual experiments were loaded onto suitcase-like trays, called Passive Experiment Containers (PECs). The PECs were transported to the ISS in the Space Shuttle cargo bay and attached to, and removed from, the ISS during extravehicular activities (EVAs). The PECs were retrieved after one or more years of space exposure and returned to Earth enabling post-flight experiment evaluation. MISSE is a multi-organization project with participants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DoD), industry and academia. MISSE has provided a platform for environmental durability studies for thousands of samples and numerous devices, and it has produced many tangible impacts. Ten PECs (and one smaller tray) have been flown, representing MISSE 1 through MISSE 8, yielding long-duration space environmental performance and durability data that enable material validation, processing recertification and space qualification; improved predictions of materials and component lifetimes in space; model verification and development; and correlation factors between space-exposure and ground-facilities enabling more accurate in-space performance predictions based on ground-laboratory testing. A few of the many experiment results and observations, and their impacts, are provided. Those highlighted include examples on improved understanding of atomic oxygen scattering mechanisms, LEO coating durability results, and polymer erosion yields and their impacts on spacecraft design. The MISSE 2 Atomic Oxygen Scattering Chamber Experiment discovered that the peak flux of scattered AO was determined to be 45 deg from normal incidence, not the model predicted cosine dependence. In addition, the erosion yield (E(sub y)) of Kapton H for AO scattered off oxidized-Al is 22% of the E(sub y) of direct AO impingement. These results were used to help determine the degradation mechanism of a cesium iodide detector within the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Experiment. The MISSE 6 Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) Degradation Experiment measured surface electrical resistance of ram and wake ITO coated samples. The data confirmed that ITO is a stable AO protective coating, and the results validated the durability of ITO conductive coatings for solar arrays for the Atmosphere-Space Transition 2 Explorer program. The MISSE 2, 6 and 7 Polymer Experiments have provided LEO AO Ey data on over 120 polymer and composites samples. The flight E(sub y) values were found to range from 3.05 x 10(exp -26) cu cm/atom for the AO resistant polymer CORIN to 9.14 x 10(exp -26) cu cm/atom for polyoxymethylene (POM). In addition, flying the same polymers on different missions has advanced the understanding of the AO E(sub y) dependency on solar exposure for polymers containing fluorine. The MISSE polymer results are highly requested and have impacted spacecraft design for WorldView-2 & -3, the Global Precipitation Measurement-Microwave Imager, and other spacecraft. The flight data has enabled the development of an Atomic Oxygen Erosion Predictive Tool that allows the erosion prediction of new and non-flown polymers. The data has also been used to develop a new NASA Technical Standards Handbook "Spacecraft Polymers Atomic Oxygen Durability Handbook." Many intangible benefits have also been derived from MISSE. For example, over 40 students have collaborated on Glenn's MISSE experiments, which have resulted in greater than $80K in student scholarships and awards in national and international science fairs. Students have also given presentations and won poster competition awards at international space conferences.

Flight Experiment↗

Lunar and Meteorite Sample Disk for Educators

NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) has the unique responsibility to curate NASA's extraterrestrial samples from past and future missions. Curation includes documentation, preservation, preparation and distribution of samples for research, education and public outreach. Between 1969 and 1972 six Apollo missions brought back 382 kilograms of lunar rocks, core and regolith samples, from the lunar surface. JSC also curates meteorites collected from a US cooperative effort among NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Smithsonian Institution that funds expeditions to Antarctica. The meteorites that are collected include rocks from Moon, Mars, and many asteroids including Vesta. The sample disks for educational use include these different samples. Active relevant learning has always been important to teachers and the Lunar and Meteorite Sample Disk Program provides this active style of learning for students and the general public. The Lunar and Meteorite Sample Disks permit students to conduct investigations comparable to actual scientists. The Lunar Sample Disk contains 6 samples; Basalt, Breccia, Highland Regolith, Anorthosite, Mare Regolith and Orange Soil. The Meteorite Sample Disk contains 6 samples; Chondrite L3, Chondrite H5, Carbonaceous Chondrite, Basaltic Achondrite, Iron and Stony-Iron. Teachers are given different activities that adhere to their standards with the disks. During a Sample Disk Certification Workshop, teachers participate in the activities as students gain insight into the history, formation and geologic processes of the moon, asteroids and meteorites.

Foxworth, Suzanne↗

NASA HUNCH Hardware

What is NASA HUNCH? High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware-HUNCH is an instructional partnership between NASA and educational institutions. This partnership benefits both NASA and students. NASA receives cost-effective hardware and soft goods, while students receive real-world hands-on experiences. The 2014-2015 was the 12th year of the HUNCH Program. NASA Glenn Research Center joined the program that already included the NASA Johnson Space Flight Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Langley Research Center and Goddard Space Flight Center. The program included 76 schools in 24 states and NASA Glenn worked with the following five schools in the HUNCH Build to Print Hardware Program: Medina Career Center, Medina, OH; Cattaraugus Allegheny-BOCES, Olean, NY; Orleans Niagara-BOCES, Medina, NY; Apollo Career Center, Lima, OH; Romeo Engineering and Tech Center, Washington, MI. The schools built various parts of an International Space Station (ISS) middeck stowage locker and learned about manufacturing process and how best to build these components to NASA specifications. For the 2015-2016 school year the schools will be part of a larger group of schools building flight hardware consisting of 20 ISS middeck stowage lockers for the ISS Program. The HUNCH Program consists of: Build to Print Hardware; Build to Print Soft Goods; Design and Prototyping; Culinary Challenge; Implementation: Web Page and Video Production.

manufacturing↗

Ecological Study of Lagoons Surrounding the John F. Kennedy Space Center, Brevard County, Florida : Theses and Project Reports - Volume 2

Many of the detailed studies done in connection with Ecological Study of the Lagoons surrounding the John F. Kennedy Space Port were performed as Master's Thesis investigations by various graduate students enrolled at F. I. T. during and subsequent to the report. The scope and purpose of what we came to call "the KSC Baseline Study" caught the imagination and interest of our student body. Many who were not financially or otherwise connected with the project found their inspiration in studies that were directly connected with project, and thus added materially to the totality of the knowledge gained. An example of one such study is the first article included in this Volume, A Master's Thesis study performed by Shen Phillip Chen, who chose the site for his investigation so that his results would correlate with and extend the results of others. In addition to the Master's Theses contained in this Volume, six other graduate studies must be acknowledged here as contributing to this Report, although they have not reached the stage of final publication. Ms. Sandra Fettes has completed a study of the amounts of five trace metals in mangrove leaves from plants at various locations around the Kennedy Space Center. Mr. Bernard Cohenour has isolated and identified a number of oil consuming bacteria endemic in the waters of the Indian Rivers. Mr. Charles Waterhouse has analyzed historic data of tidal gauges in the lagoonal area and correlated it with wind field records. Mr. Renkert Meyer has measured the vertical and horizontal currents of the lagoons and is attempting an interpretation of them in terms of the wind field as a driving force. Mr. Richard Campbell has measured the rate of nitrogen fixation in both the water columns and the sediments under them in the lagoons. Mr. Craig Weiderhold has measured thl3 annual variations in the populations of benthic invertebrates in the lagoons. An integral part of the F. I. T. curriculum is a requirement that each undergraduate student perform an independent study during his Senior year and submit his results in the form and format of a professional scientific report. While none of these senior Project Reports have been included in this Volume because of space limitations, many of them aided significantly in the overall study. Typical of these were: light and dark bottle studies of the blue-green algae respiration; writing and executing computer studies comparing the water chemistry data from various sites; detection and identification of nitrogen fixation bacteria in the Indian River; measurement of dissolved oils and greases in the river, photographically recording the benthic life-forms found in the river bottom; measuring the vertical structure of drift and slope currents in too lagoons; and measurement of water level variations along the long axis of a lagoon as a function of wind stress. These articles are published as a part of this Final Report in an effort to make available for the record as much of the basic data as possible. The few articles published on the Indian River have in general not contained much detailed data, so that comparisons of current status to conditions of the past are difficult or impossible. A major effort of both the Oceanographic and Ecological communities for the past decade has been the retrieval and storage of basic data in order to permit determinations of trends or changes in baseline conditions. It is believed that the information compiled here will be of great value in any future investigations.

Source record↗

Electronics and Software Engineer for Robotics Project Intern

I was assigned to mentor high school students for the 2017 First Robotics Competition. Using a team based approach, I worked with the students to program the robot and applied my electrical background to build the robot from start to finish. I worked with students who had an interest in electrical engineering to teach them about voltage, current, pulse width modulation, solenoids, electromagnets, relays, DC motors, DC motor controllers, crimping and soldering electrical components, Java programming, and robotic simulation. For the simulation, we worked together to generate graphics files, write simulator description format code, operate Linux, and operate SOLIDWORKS. Upon completion of the FRC season, I transitioned over to providing full time support for the LCS hardware team. During this phase of my internship I helped my co-intern write test steps for two networking hardware DVTs , as well as run cables and update cable running lists.

Teijeiro, Antonio↗

How to Make a Microgravity Drop Tower for Your Classroom

Microgravity is quite often seen as exotic and special as astronauts float around in the International Space Station, eating MM's in mid-air, and performing science experiments, all done seemingly without gravity being present. Surprisingly enough, up on the ISS there is about 90 of the same gravity that holds you to the floor in your classroom or museum exhibit hall. Participate in this session and you will understand that and more. You can use simple devices to demonstrate microgravity conditions in your classroom or museum exhibit hall. This will be the same microgravity condition that astronauts experience on the ISS, just for a much shorter period of time. Contrary to popular opinion of some people, microgravity is NOT caused by zero gravity up there. Microgravity on the ISS is due to free fall within the Earth's gravitational field. That means you can drop an item in free fall in your classroom and museum exhibit hall and that item will experience microgravity. In this session, a short theory segment will explain and reinforce these concepts so that you may explain to others. The session will concentrate on showing the session participants how to make an effective, but inexpensive, drop tower for use in the classroom. Such a drop tower may be used to reinforce classroom instruction in physics and forces motion as well as serve as a platform for student investigations, classroom competitions, and student science or technology fair entries. Session participants will build their own simple microgravity experiment and operate them in a drop tower, compare results, and modify their experiment based on results. This material is also useful for public demonstrations at school open houses, travelling museum exhibits, fixed museum exhibits, and independent student projects or experiments. These free fall concepts also connect terrestrial demonstrations with planetary moon motion, comet trajectory, and more.

forces↗

The Effects of Long-Duration Spaceflight on Training Retention and Transfer

Training our crew members for long duration, exploration-class missions will have to maximize long-term retention and transfer of the trained skills. The expected duration of the missions, our inability to predict all the possible tasks the crew will be called upon to perform, and the low training-to-mission time ratio require that the training be maximally effective such that the skills acquired during training will be retained and will be transferrable across a wide range of specific tasks that are different from the particular tasks used during training. However, to be able to design training that can achieve these ambitious goals, we must first understand the ways in which long-duration spaceflight affects training retention and transfer. Current theories of training retention and transfer are largely based on experimental studies conducted at university laboratories using undergraduate students as participants. Furthermore, all such studies have been conducted on Earth. We do not know how well the results of these studies predict the performance of crew members. More specifically, we do not know how well the results of these studies predict the performance of crew members in space and especially during long-duration missions. To address this gap in our knowledge, the current on-going study seeks to test the null hypothesis that performance of university undergraduate students on Earth on training retention and transfer tests do in fact predict accurately the performance of crew members during long-duration spaceflights. To test this hypothesis, the study employs a single 16-month long experimental protocol with 3 different participant groups: undergraduate university students, crew members on the ground, and crew members in space. Results from this study will be presented upon its completion. This poster presents results of study trials of the two tasks used in this study: a data entry task and a mapping task. By researching established training principles, by examining future needs, and by using current practices in spaceflight training as test beds, this research project is mitigating program risks and generating templates and requirements to meet future training needs.

ISS↗

The Effects of Long-Duration Spaceflight on Training Retention and Transfer

Training our crew members for long duration, exploration-class missions will have to maximize long-term retention and transfer of the trained skills. The expected duration of the missions, our inability to predict all the possible tasks the crew will be called upon to perform, and the low training-to-mission time ratio require that the training be maximally effective such that the skills acquired during training will be retained and will be transferrable across a wide range of specific tasks that are different from the particular tasks used during training. However, to be able to design training that can achieve these ambitious goals, we must first understand the ways in which long-duration spaceflight affects training retention and transfer. Current theories of training retention and transfer are largely based on experimental studies conducted at university laboratories using undergraduate students as participants. Furthermore, all such studies have been conducted on Earth. We do not know how well the results of these studies predict the performance of crew members. More specifically, we do not know how well the results of these studies predict the performance of crew members in space and especially during long-duration missions. To address this gap in our knowledge, the current on-going study seeks to test the null hypothesis that performance of university undergraduate students on Earth on training retention and transfer tests do in fact predict accurately the performance of crew members during long-duration spaceflights. To test this hypothesis, the study employs a single 16-month long experimental protocol with 3 different participant groups: undergraduate university students, crew members on the ground, and crew members in space. Results from this study will be presented upon its completion. This poster presents results of study trials of the two tasks used in this study: a data entry task and a mapping task. By researching established training principles, by examining future needs, and by using current practices in spaceflight training as test beds, this research project is mitigating program risks and generating templates and requirements to meet future training needs.

training↗

AztechSat-1, a First Collaborative CubeSat Between NASA and Mexico

An international collaboration program for capacity building in space technology is being established between NASA and the Mexican Space Agency (AEM). Its objective is to develop a series of CubeSats collaboratively in a way that benefits both agencies. For AEM, this experience will support the development of human capital required for its space program. This project provides an opportunity for NASA future missions to benefit from commercially available technologies demonstrated in space. AEM was recently created by the Mexican Government to use and develop space technology in Mexico. Current AEM plans call for having the capability of developing its own communication satellites by 2030, so the need for having a Mexican cadre of space experts is mandatory. The program will start with the development and launching of AztechSat-1, the first AEM CubeSat project to be deployed from the International Space Station (ISS). Several public Mexican universities will participate in this project to demonstrate GlobalStar, a satellite communications provider using a constellation of LEO satellites, as an option for small satellite missions. AztechSat-1 mission objectives are:(1) Develop a flight ready CubeSat for deployment from the ISS; (2) Demonstrate GlobalStar´s Network as a method to advance communications in CubeSat missions. AztechSat-1 is envisioned as a 1U CubeSat and will be designed and constructed by Mexican graduate students from two major universities in Mexico: UNAM and IPN. The students will be mentored and supervised by researchers from NASA Ames Research Center (NARC). Flight acceptance tests are going to be done both at Mexican university labs as well as at NARC. Funding for the project will be provided concurrently by AEM, the Mexican participating universities, and other Mexican entities. The development of AztechSat-1 will emphasize the transfer of knowledge in space mission analysis and design, flight acceptance testing and other areas of space technology which are not well developed in Mexico yet. Mexican students will benefit from their mentoring from NASA researchers and will provide a multiplier effect in the development of the next generation of Mexican aerospace engineers. AztechSat-1 will be developed in a period of twelve months and will be launched by late 2015. AztechSat´s success will define the future of collaboration between NASA and AEM in capacity building. A plan for developing a series of AztechSat’s in a one per year basis, with increasing capabilities and complexity is currently being negotiated between NASA an AEM.

Martinez, Andres↗

Introduction to Multicasting

This is a presentation for students who will be participating in the App Development Challenge (ADC). This discussion tells the students the data format NASA will be using (which their software must be compatible with). This presentation contains only publicly available images and information, and is provided to help the students with their coding (that they will submit to NASA).

Hirsh, Robert↗

CERES S’COOL Project Update: The Evolution and Value of a Long-Running Education Project With a Foundation in NASA Earth Science Missions

In January 1997, the Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL; http://scool.larc.nasa.gov) Project began with NASA scientists visiting rural Gloucester, Virginia to observe clouds with middle school students. In the 19 years since, this educational outreach component of NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission has collected ~141,000 observations from every continent and ocean basin around the world. Thousands of students and teachers have directly engaged in S’COOL. Beginning in 2008 we invited citizen scientists to participate as well. Over time S’COOL has added more components that engage participants directly with science data analysis, continuing direct ties to CERES research. Whenever possible, the S’COOL team extracts corresponding subsets of CERES data, which are sent to the participant to analyze. Observations can now be matched to images and cloud retrievals from MODIS and measurements from CALIPSO. To date, more than half of S'COOL observation reports correspond to one (or more) CERES overpasses. Comparisons with CERES geostationary satellite cloud retrievals were recently added, making cloud observations at almost any time of day over non-polar regions useful for validation. A thorough analysis of co-located S’COOL and satellite data was conducted during summer 2015. Results show that the S’COOL community provides high quality observations offering useful insights on the strengths and shortcomings of passive cloud remote sensing from space. This reconfirmed the utility of S’COOL observations to the scientific community and provides observers with deeper insight into the challenges associated with validation of space-based cloud property retrievals.

Lin H Chambers↗