Posted by Jesse Clark in Calendar, Education, Events, Projects, SAL, Science on January 4, 2011
January 18, 2011 to January 21, 2011
Location:
Space Travelers Emporium (map)
1947 30th St. San Diego, CA 92102
Sponsored by NASA, EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students) is an educational outreach program allowing middle school students to take pictures of our Earth from a digital camera on board the International Space Station.
SD Space will work with local middle schools and offer after-school activities supporting the mission. If you would like your middle-school child to participate, please RSVP to events@sdspace.org to participate.
SD Space members and the public are welcome to help out. Please let us know if you’d like to volunteer by emailing us at events@sdspace.org.
Posted by Jesse Clark in Calendar, Events, Projects, SAL on January 4, 2011
Sat, Jan 15, 2011
12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Location:
Space Travelers Emporium (map)
1947 30th St. San Diego, CA 92102
Interested in building something? Get together with other SD Space members to work on space-related projects.
This month’s Saturday build session includes a DIY Sky Satellite.
We will be starting phase one of the project we selected in December. We took a page from Make magazine’s 
“DIY Space” issue and determined we would build our own homebuilt satellite that take payloads first to a tethered height, then phase two will launch into near-space and hopefully phase three high into sub-orbit.
Members and the public are welcome to join the project team, but please sign up by Jan. 14th. RSVP to events@sdspace.org to participate.
Note: We recommend that parents participate with their children; children under 10 must have a parent present for the entire workshop.
Posted by Jesse Clark in Astronomy, Chapter Updates, Education, News, Project ASTRO, Projects, SAL, Science on October 20, 2010
On Saturday, October 16th, Derek Nye and several SD Space members led a telescope building workshop at the Space Activities Lab in South Park. Five students attended the free hands-on activity, the second in a series offered by SD Space.
Before starting the build project, the students learned about telescopes from Phil Blanco, a local astronomy professor and Project ASTRO leader. They talked about how telescopes work, Galileo’s discoveries with them 400 years ago, and the kinds of things one could see with the Galileoscope (which has far better optics than Galileo’s telescope!).
After completing their new telescopes, everyone had fun trying them out in the lab, and then looking up and down the street. With a telescope mount – such as a camera tripod, some of the night time objects that can be observed in the next couple of weeks include: craters on our Moon, Jupiter and its moons, and even a special appearance by comet Hartley 2. We’ll be getting together at the Emporium soon to do just that when we have a clear night.
Contact projects@sdspace.org if you’d like to participate, or if you’re interested in attending future workshops.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in Education, Projects, SAL on September 29, 2010
On Saturday, September 18th, Derek Nye led a model rocketry workshop at the Space Activities Lab in South Park. Seven San Diego students attended the free hands-on event, the first in a series offered by SD Space.
While building their rocket kits, the students learned about aerodynamics, construction techniques, and the fundamentals of rocketry itself. Many of the kids were introduced to rocketry for the very first time. By the time we were done, they had a fully built rocket ready to fly that they built themselves, proving their own capabilities in working hands on with tools, and their ability to take on an interesting project.
Derek and the kids hope to launch their rockets at an upcoming Dart Rocketry event. Contact projects@sdspace.org if you’d like to participate, or if you’re interested in attending future workshops.
Posted by Chris Radcliff in Junior Explorers, Projects on September 22, 2010
Over the summer, SD Space fielded a team for the Moonbots challenge. After the main competition was done, we continued with a mini-challenge of our own for younger kids. The program was recently featured in an article on the Calit2 website:
About 15 children ranging in age from 6 to 11 participated in the program, which was sponsored by ViaSat (a producer of satellite and other digital communications) and led by Calit2’s MyLab Director Saura Naderi. Naderi collaborated with the San Diego Space Society to recruit children for the challenge, which taught them the basics of robot design, from gear mechanics to programming.
You can view all the progress reports (including weekly video blogs) on the team’s Moonbots Mini-Challenge site.
Thanks again to Saura Naderi, Derek Nye, Moonbots, Calit2, and ViaSat for all they did to make this program work. We look forward to participating again next year.
