The best experiences are the ones we do with passion … and with friends.Last week, my previous officemate and dear friend Jerome was organising a Science fair during the Week for Science in France. More precisely, a non-profit organisation “Scientomomes” that he chairs was organising the fair with a multitude of stands covering information technology and robotics (this is Jerome’s universe), archaeology, fluid mechanics…Eager to join the team, I suggested a workshop on EO satellites. The idea was to simplify the process behind an earth observation mission for the kids and make them build rudimentary models.So I imagined a workshop divided into three steps:
What to observe ?
First the kids select a subject of interest: hydrology, oceanography…and most important an issue that passionate them: melting of the ice sheets, flood monitoring, deforestation…And from this they select a technology (satellite) that can help answer their question much like a phase 0 (CNES) for an EO mission. For this they use a monitor connected to a pc with the following links/apps from CNES/ESA/Google:https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/http://cnes-xch.lesitevideo.net/satellites/https://www.esa.int/esaKIDSfr/Earth.html
Make your satellite model
Then they build the satellite from basic tools that covers the main components: container, power source, scientific instruments, communication device, and orientation finders. Nothing sophisticated. They use printed models of satellites, gold papers for isolation, cardboards, screws for thruters… (Here they are at phase C). Here is one rudimentary example from NASA :https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/build-a-spacecraft/en/
Launch it…
Last step they launch the satellite, make the commissioning and check the actual data from the mission. Finally they make sure the satellite is destroyed properly (well in this case virtually). For the launch we used a youtube videos over a connected monitor:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMdzZqJpHA0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlaIZCL8-xINeedless to say the event was a great success and we had an army of future engineers building the most extensive Earth Observation System of Systems !And to my delight Clement (the future engineer you see in the first picture) selected to make a satellite to monitor soil moisture and he made a model of ESA SMOS satellite. So the future seems to be bright…
Thank Ahmad !
Dear Ahmed,First of all congratulations!! How beautiful workshop you have done with these big brains. I am teaching remote sensing in Geomatics Eng Dept. in Turkey. And I also would love to do the same kind of workshop with high school students in our region. I was wondering if you would like to collaborate with me to make similar workshop in Trabzon Turkey. If you would agree, There might be also some funding available when I apply to TUBITAK to prepare a scientific workshop for students. I am sure you will get so many similar emails like this after this post, but weather you agree or not, this is something I want to do in the future :)Kind Regards,Esra
Thanks to You Jérôme !\n\nyann