Photo Caption: Space Shuttle Atlantis at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after arriving at Pad 39A on April 21, 2010, in preparation for flight STS-132. Click on the image to see Atlantis up close and personal.

This is a Teachable Moments in the News QuickLinks Post. It connects a news story with this Blog’s existing powerful library of Posts and Resource Pages. The cited Posts and Pages provide a deep understanding of concepts in the earth and space sciences relevant to the news story. Teachers—the Posts and Pages are also designed for use as lessons, allowing you to easily bring current science into the classroom as a teachable moment. Each cited Post is outlined in the Teachers Lesson Planner, which includes the Post’s essential questions, concepts, objectives, and math skills.

This is it. The moment when the reality of loss truly begins to sink in. There are three flights of the space shuttle left, one for each of the remaining orbiters—Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour. Currently scheduled for launch Friday, May 14, at 2:20 pm EDT, it is Atlantis’ time to soar one last time.

I will be posting these Teachable Moments for each of the remaining flights in the hope that parents and teachers will be able to tune in with our children, and savor the end of an era before the fleet is retired for museum display, forever standing in silent testimony to a remarkable human achievement of days gone by.

Follow the flight of Atlantis on NASA TV. You can also follow along with NASA”s STS-132 Launch Blog, which will begin coverage at 9:00 am EDT on May 14. Other NASA pages of interest:

Countdown Clock and Mission Description

STS-132 Image Gallery

STS-132 Mission Timeline

Here is a NASA video on the rollout of Atlantis to Pad 39-A

Below are previous posts at Blog on the Universe that powerfully address the science, history, and politics of human spaceflight—and can be used to help make the flight of Atlantis a Teachable Moment.

You might start with my February 6, 2010 post Shuttle Endeavour About to Blast Off on its Second to Last Mission, where I imagine what it will be like as the era of the Space Shuttle fades into history along with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. It’s a powerful lesson for students not realizing they are living through a moment in history.

The Business Trip

Essential questions: How far is ‘Outer Space’? What does this imply for the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere?

Weekly Challenge 4: You Want Me to Do What With a Bathroom Scale?

Essential question: Why are astronauts weightless in space?

TMN QuickLinks: Shuttle Atlantis in Orbit, Make it a Teachable Moment

Essential question: When a space shuttle launches—how heavy, how fast, how far?

Commentary on Blue Ribbon Panel Exploring NASA’s Strategic Options for Human Space Flight

Essential question: What should be the goal of human space flight?

Shuttle Atlantis Home! Prompts Me to Look at America’s Future … and I’m Troubled

Essential questions: Is the end of the space shuttle era a symptom of a larger problem for America? Are we taking science and technology education seriously?

Teachers and Parents: make sure to read about The Teacher’s Toolbox which is designed to help you put this Blog to work for your class and your children. If you’re new to Blog on the Universe read About this Blog.

Photocredit: NASA

Photo caption: The Eyjafjallajökull Volcano erupting in Iceland as seen from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite on May 2, 2010. How dare it interrupt the lives of all those folks on business travel.

This is a Dr. Jeff’s Jeffisms post.

This is crossposted at the Huffington Post HERE.

OK, so I’m a regular on Twitter, and proud of it. I guess that makes me a Tweep, and if you aren’t, I’ve got something to tell you. There are lots of folks that think Twitter is where you go when you’ve got this intense need to broadcast to the world what you had for lunch. Mostly these are folks that stay away from Twitter ’cause they either don’t understand it or its power as a social medium. But there are also a whole bunch of Tweeps out there that do think I’m interested in their lunch today—let’s call them lunchies.

So to Twitter avoiders, and to the lunchies, I’d like to add my two cents. Twitter is a water cooler for the 21st century. At this cooler you can meet fellow human beings from across the planet, and share thoughts about life, our world, and our children—common thoughts that bind us all, regardless of nationality. In an age when as never before humanity faces a perfect storm of global problems, it’s precisely this kind of water cooler you’d like to see, and to frequent.

Twitter allows countless users (yes, the Tweeps) to send their messages (Tweets) into the cyber aether, forming an immense Public Stream. It is a place where all messages are equal, and each is nothing more than a human thought compressed into 140 characters. From the shores of the great Public Stream, you can see the messages flow by. There goes one from a teacher who’s had a tough day. I think I’ll reach out to her with a link, and tell her why her job is so important. There goes a link to an article on nuclear proliferation from a Pakistani perspective. Gee, I wonder what their thinking might be. There’s a thought from the President of the United States. Hey Mr. President, did you see the open letter I wrote to you on the crisis in science education? And that person over there is proposing a regular time on Twitter to have a global conversation about climate change (oh that’s me!) And yes, there goes a message from a guy who says he had a tuna sandwich for lunch.

But to be part of a social community, you can’t just watch the messages flow by. (You could, but that passive trolling for information is the old, dark ages internet experience.) You need to wade into the stream, and find folks with whom you’d like to strike up a conversation, and Tweet your own thoughts into the Public Stream. So Twitter makes it so. You can decide to ‘Follow’ any of the Tweeps in the Twitterverse, and Mr. Twitter will pull all the Tweets of those that you Follow from the Public Stream, and feed them to you as your own continuous thread of human consciousness. You can also create lists of favorites, so the consciousness can be distilled as you see fit. And the sum total of all of those Tweeps you Follow make up your Personal Learning Network (PLN). Conversely, folks might think YOUR thoughts—your Tweets—are deep and insightful, maybe ’cause you are a fellow lunchie, and so they decide to Follow you—these are your ‘Followers’.

The most remarkable experience I have on Twitter, and it’s right up there with the very best learning experiences I’ve EVER had over my lifetime as an educator, an astrophysicist, and a learner, is #edchat. Every Tuesday night at 7:00 pm Eastern Time, I join HUNDREDS of educators from across the planet that get comfortable in front of their computers—a very local and personal experience—and have a global, free-for-all conversation about education. The operation of Twitter as the vehicle for communication quickly recedes into the background, and you enter into a world of rapid-paced vibrant conversations with folks as committed as you to sharing important ideas. You leave with new thoughts, new directions, a reinvigorated sense that the issues of importance to you are also important to others—providing a common bond, and you embrace friends you’ve never met but that you deeply understand.

I am so impressed with #edchat to address diverse topics like education reform, recipes for success and failure in the classroom, implementation of new educational technologies, and assessment, that we (the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education) have decided to launch in early Summer 2010 our own weekly scheduled Twitter chat on Science Education, and maybe a second more specific one dedicated to Climate Change Education. Help me gauge interest! If you think you might want to participate, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Recently I looked back at my archive of Tweets that I’ve sent over the months, and some (at least to me) seem funny, compelling …. why, even thought-provoking. (Feel free to disagree!) Who says you can’t frame really big ideas in 140 characters. But that’s also pretty much the whole idea of my Dr. Jeff’s ‘Jeffisms’ flavor of blog post here at BotU. So I decided that each month I’ll choose some of my Tweets, and bundle them in a post as ‘Tweetisms for the 21st Century”. This is the first such post, and below are a number of recent Tweets selected from conversations I’ve had with friends across my PLN, and as part of that truly remarkable weekly experience #edchat.

And hey, if you don’t do Twitter, maybe you ought to give it a try … and if you are already a Tweep, well cool! But regardless, I’m right here, right now, formally inviting you to Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/doctorjeff (assuming you are not a lunchie), and I’ll Follow you back!

-dj

Some Tweetisms

On the Environment:

BREAKING NEWS: Humans angry that ash from volcano interrupts their lives. Planet apologizes 4 terrible inconvenience.

Fred & Barney? Lived long ago, so must b dumb. They drove rock cars that weighed a ton … we’re smarter now.

DENIAL DAILY NEWS: Earth wanders off axis, heads 4 Sun. #Climate change deniers blame raging inferno on conspiracy by science community.

On Our Existence:

Question: Was Mr. Magoo just lucky? Or did the world conspire to move under his feet in a way that made life joyful … at least for him?

Sometimes the issues that are in plain sight are the hardest to see.

On Education:

If we treat our learners as so many pegs to push thru holes, where is the humanity in that? Where is the joy in learning?

It takes a community to educate a child & a network of communities to reach a generation. http://ncesse.org/about/core-beliefs/

We are teaching to the test because it is the educational path of least resistance for results … & a disgrace to education.

KEY IRONY – you can teach the wrong things really well, get rewarded for teaching it well, and our kids and nation will all suffer.

… because 6 MILLION teachers in the US 1 out of 50 Americans have no coherent voice. Use Social Media for a movement: http://bit.ly/bc7VG8

On Science:

ASTROLOGY DEPT NEWS: “Hey Ralph, what are the #zodiacfacts today?”  “Who cares, let’s use the dart board like we always do.”

Why do I get the feeling there’s an Anti-Science Movement? Hey followers – no more medicine, vaccines, cell phones, TV, computers. 

Does anyone know where Blindfaithyland is? Can’t seem to find it on Google Maps. But it must exist….lots of folks swear by it. 

The Doctorjeff Funnies:

New adage: If we were meant to fly, we’d have …… a brain that could engineer a flying machine.

Help!! A Koala is holding me prisoner and won’t let me go until I get a tweet from an Australian. Anybody down under that can help?

[2 folks from Australia quickly answered my plea and I got out of the clutches of the Koala.]

Photocredit: NASA

Photo caption: Earth as seen by the MESSENGER spacecraft as it flew by our planet on August 2 2005.

This post is a Dr. Jeff Speaks Out.

This is crossposted at the Huffington Post HERE and at the Space Tweep Society Blog HERE.

Don’t let your seemingly vast experience as an inhabitant of this world fool you. It’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of self-importance. Let me explain.

You likely live in a house or apartment on a street, and in a community that’s part of some town, maybe even some major urban area. Your community is likely part of a much larger state or province of one of the nations of Earth—which are themselves nothing more than imaginary constructs of human society. Your country is also likely assigned to one of the continental masses whose sum total of land area is just 29% of the planet’s surface. You are small and the Earth is seemingly vast, as if we humans to Earth are just so many micro-organisms scurrying about each day (each rotation of Earth), and following rules of social engagement that often defy logic.

It’s a story that at a most fundamental level defines your address. It may be all the address you need to ship a package to your friend across the ocean. But it won’t cut it with the intergalactic post office. As I said, don’t let your experience and perception fool you. It’s the rest of the address of which most Earthlings are unaware. For so many reasons it’s also the most important part of the address.

This seemingly vast Earth is but a tiny planet. (By comparison, over 1,000 Earths fit inside Jupiter.) Earth is one of eight planets orbiting the Sun—a tiny star by star standards—as part of a planetary System called the Solar System. The Sun resides in the Solar Neighborhood of stars, a small smattering of stars found in the Orion Spur—a nondescript little corner of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is a vast city of stars, with enough stars to give 50 to every human on Earth. Right now, you, your family, and the rest of your race are orbiting just one of those stars.

The Milky Way is one of two large galaxies in the Local Group of 25-30 galaxies. The other large one, Andromeda, is on a collision course with ours. And the cosmic debris-field that is the Local Group of galaxies resides not too far cosmically speaking from the Virgo Cluster of 1,300 to 2,000 galaxies. The Local Group and Virgo Cluster are just two of the 100 to 200 or so groups and clusters of galaxies making up the Local Supercluster of more than 50,000 galaxies. The Local Supercluster—a small supercluster—is one of MILLIONS of superclusters that are woven together to form the largest structures ever seen—Galactic Filaments. And all this comprises the Observable Universe—what we believe is a remarkably insignificant portion of the Universe that nature, by law, allows us to see. Beyond what is observable, the Universe may truly be infinite.

So using myself to summarize—

I live in a house on a street in a town in the State of Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, in the USA, in North America, on Earth, in the Solar System, in the Solar Neighborhood, in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy, in the Local Group of Galaxies, near the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, in the Local Supercluster of galaxies in the tiny corner of the Universe we like to call the Observable Universe.

That is our address. It makes the often human perception of our reality as the center of cosmic activity …. just laughable. You always know the most about your own neighborhood. But that also leads you to conclude your neighborhood is somehow important. In truth, it is only important because YOU live there. And YOU obviously think YOU are important. So please think about this … for vast numbers of humans, our perception, our daily life, is driven by self-importance, a remarkable lack of humility, ignorance of—even disinterest in—a greater context of existence which our machines of exploration have brought into crisp focus, and for many, a sense that embracing God is the righteous and comforting thing to do—but does not require taking time to look at the majesty beyond Earth. And while we burn precious, non-renewable calories watching “reality” television, following the lives of the rich and famous, acquiring lots of things, deciding which of us is better or more deserving or more moral, and buying into the distorted views of what our societies have our children embrace as heroes and role models, our world—the spaceship that affords us the view of majesty—is coming under attack.

The microbes called human kill one another because each group, each (bacterial) culture, thinks they are more important than the other. It is self-importance taken to the extreme. Their self-serving technology is modifying the environment of the planet, not only threatening their existence for generations to come (how do they do that to their children?), but puts at grave risk countless species that don’t have the gift of recognizing the majesty of the cosmos. Isn’t it ironic that the only species on Earth that does possess the gifts of intelligence and tool-making, does not collectively care about its world, and collectively squanders these gifts?

So watch the movie above, taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft as it flew by in 2005. Watch as the Earth recedes into the cold, black void of space. Imagine the nearly 7 billion humans scurrying around on its surface. How many of them recognize that the remarkable spaceship they are on is NOT owned by them? It never was. But because of their technology, they are now, by natural decree, stewards of this spaceship for good or ill. Do they understand their responsibilities to the spaceship, to all its occupants, and to themselves? For if this tiny blue world is laid to waste, the geologic Age of Self-Importance will be over, the rest of the Universe will surely not care … and I fear God will not come to the rescue.

A penny for your thoughts …..

Photo and movie credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. For more information about the photo and movie visit the MESSENGER web site.

Photo caption: Dr. Jeff after a Family Science Night for 600 kids, parents, and teachers. Pretty cool—kids want an autograph …. from an astrophysicist.

Now this should be a blast! My friend Rita Karl, Director of Education at Challenger Center for Space Science Education invited me to do a live webcast. Thanks Rita! It will give me an opportunity to present directly to classes lots of the stuff I’ve been doing here at the Blog. We really hope students across the U.S. and beyond might be able to tune in and get a deeper sense of their world in a greater space. I’ve also written up ideas for teachers on how to leverage the webcast with activities and lessons in the classroom.

For a description of what I’ll be talking about, information on how to tune in, and how to put this webcast to work in your classroom (or at home if you homeschool) check out the latest NCESSE News at the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education website.

See you Thursday!

-dj

Photo Caption: Stop what you are doing for a moment, just imagine the stark contrast between the surface of this world and the vacuum of space, and click on this photo for a Zoom. Be thankful on this 40th Earth Day for the veil of atmosphere above you, slender as it may be. NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft took this image of Mercury’s northern horizon on September 29, 2009, during its third and final flyby of Mercury, as we were covering the event live via Twitter from Mission Control in Columbia, Maryland. This image captures portions of Mercury we had never before seen—it represents history in the making. I invite you to read more about this image at the MESSENGER mission gallery.

This post is a Teachable Moment in the News.

This is crossposted at the Space Tweep Society Blog HERE.

FLASH: We interrupt the rhythm of your daily lives to bring you news from beyond Earth, from a tiny robot determined to take the human race to an alien world. Many of you tuned in September 2009 when Blog on the Universe provided live coverage of the MESSENGER spacecraft’s flyby of Mercury, the last gravity assist needed to get the spacecraft on course for Mercury orbital insertion in March 2011. We are now less than 11 months from that historic first—a spacecraft in orbit around the mysterious inner-most planet of our Solar System. You might want to bookmark the countdown clock.

Since last September 29, 7 months of our lives have been filled with a new school year, passage of seasons, and the ebb and flow of over 200 days. Meanwhile, dutifully navigating through the harsh environment of space, our little spacecraft has been steadily gaining on its rendezvous with destiny on March 18, 2011, under the watchful eyes of its extended family back on Earth—the MESSENGER Team. For this team, those 200+ days were filled with assessing data already broadcast to Earth from MESSENGER’s 3 prior flybys of the planet, and preparing for orbital insertion and on-orbit operations.

These engineers and scientists are the current generation of explorers on the frontiers of human exploration, and ought to be held up to our children as heroes and role models in the age of high technology—and at a time when America needs to step to the plate in science and technology education if we are to compete in the 21st century (you might want to read my related essay at Huffington Post.) So meet these heroes and role models—the Core Team, the Science Team, the Instrument Team, the Engineering Team, and the Mission Operations Team. Have a conversation with your kids, or if you are a teacher, have a conversation with your class about this remarkable group of folks. And to really get up close and personal, read how cool operations engineer Ray Espiritu got from his dream in middle school to being part of the MESSENGER mission. Read highlights on the lives of other MESSENGER Team members using the button at the bottom of the Highlights Page.

So now for some really exciting news sent to the entire MESSENGER Team via email on April 18, 2010, by Eric J. Finnegan, MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer. I have provided the text of Eric’s email without modification to give you a sense of the behind-the-scenes communication and spirit of teamwork that a group of folks like you and me is undertaking on behalf of humanity. We are now fully engaged in preparations for an encounter with another world—

Public Relations

This month, preparations for orbital operations came front and center, with a press release describing the extent of preparations the team is conducting, tactfully described by our Payload Operations Manager, Alice Berman.

Navigation 

It hasn’t taken long—the navigation and guidance and control teams have almost closed the gap on Mercury. Over the last month, the predicted trajectory of the satellite has been narrowed to within 1-sigma of the target. Through careful management of the solar array positions and body orientations, the predicted trajectory of the spacecraft is now less than 10 km off the b-plane aim point and less than one minute from the target arrival time needed for Mercury Orbit Insertion. The likelihood of future trajectory correction maneuvers is rapidly diminishing!

MOI Readiness

The operations and engineering teams continue to prepare for events before, during and after the Mercury Orbit Insertion maneuver. The team is considering all possible nominal and anomalous conditions to ensure a robust execution plan, thereby ensuring a successful Mercury insertion. The next milestone for the team will be a Fault Management Review, occurring on June 2. An independent team of reviewers will look over the teams preparation plans and provide any necessary recommendations to ensure successful execution of this mission critical event.

Orbital Operations Readiness

The engineering and operations teams have completed all of the detailed table top reviews covering the necessary flight operations for each of the spacecraft subsystems. Furthermore, all of the detailed discussion meetings between the mission operations team and the instrument engineers, to review the on-board and ground command procedures for orbital operations have been conducted. These series of meeting and reviews have resulted in a number of items that will need to be worked off over the next several months as the teams work towards the fall Orbital Readiness Review.

The science planning and mission operations teams completed the most recent week-in-the-life (WITL) test activity on 24 March. A team debriefing meeting was conducted to cover the activities and lessons learned from the five week exercise. This activity required the MESSENGER team to process two consecutive weeks of orbital operations in a real-time test-as-you-fly environment. The next WITL test activity will exercise four consecutive weeks of orbital operations. The kickoff meeting for this multi-week activity is scheduled for 21 April.

This month, the instrument scientists started the final verification activities for the planning functions of the MESSENGER Scibox software. on April 5, the latest configured version of the SciBox software was released allowing instrument scientists to start evaluation of the software-generated observation plan. Presentations of these observing plans by the instrument scientists to the cognizant Science Discipline Groups will commence at the end of April. In parallel with this activity, the operations and guidance and control teams are working their way through verification of the commanding functions of the Scibox software. Over 10 weeks of the 52 week orbital schedule have been processed by the G&C team using high fidelity dynamics simulations to ensure safe execution of the auto generated command sequences. The operations team has processed 5 weeks of orbital schedules though their command verification tools and vehicle state simulations, ensuring valid execution as well as identifying a few command efficiencies. Processing of the Scibox software generated command sequences will continue until all 52 weeks of scheduled science activities have been processed through the verification tools from both teams.

As a cumulative test of orbital readiness, the operations team kicked off planning activities for a full flight execution of orbital operations, to occur this summer. Current plans are to execute 1-2 weeks of orbital operations, in a cadence and manner that will be utilized during orbit. This activity will flight verify the end-to-end operations of the MESSENGER system.

There are many activities to complete before March 18, 2011, however all members of the MESSENGER team are now engaged and are working toward successful execution of orbital operations.

—Eric J. Finnegan MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer

We wish the best to this remarkable group of folks for the continued success of MESSENGER, and stay tuned for mission updates, and extensive live coverage of MESSENGER orbital insertion. And readers, I invite you to put your thoughts to ‘paper’ with a comment below:)

The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education oversees the MESSENGER Educator Fellowship Program and other MESSENGER education and public outreach activities, including the development of compendia of lessons on Solar System exploration and science, and programming for families at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Consider one of the Center’s programs for your community. Blog on the Universe is also one of the Center’s programs.

Photocredti: NASA

Photo Caption: Space Shuttle Discovery docked at the International Space Station on April 16,2010. The Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module is visible in Discovery’s payload bay. More at the NASA image library for STS-131.

This is a Teachable Moments in the News QuickLinks Post. It connects a news story with this Blog’s existing powerful library of Posts and Resource Pages. The cited Posts and Pages provide a deep understanding of concepts in the earth and space sciences relevant to the news story. Teachers—the Posts and Pages are also designed for use as lessons, allowing you to easily bring current science into the classroom as a teachable moment. Each cited Post is outlined in the Teachers Lesson Planner, which includes the Post’s essential questions, concepts, objectives, and math skills.

Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-131) is landing today. There are only 3 more flights of the Shuttle through September 2010 before retirement of the fleet. Watch Discovery’s landing on NASA TV with your class this morning.

Make this a teachable moment! Below are previous posts at Blog on the Universe that powerfully address the science, history, and politics of human spaceflight—and all of them embrace the notion that science education is about conceptual understanding at an emotional level.

I suggest you start with my February 6, 2010 post Shuttle Endeavour About to Blast Off on its Second to Last Mission, where I talk about what it will be like for all of us when the Space Shuttle stops flying, and the era of this remarkable machine fades into history. This is a very powerful lesson for students that may not realize they are living through a moment in history.

Finally, if you have memories of the Space Shuttle you’d like to share with other readers of this Blog, you’re invited to leave a comment below.

Posts to explore in class and at home—

The Business Trip

Essential questions: How far is ‘Outer Space’? What does this imply for the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere?

Weekly Challenge 4: You Want Me to Do What With a Bathroom Scale?

Essential question: Why are astronauts weightless in space?

TMN QuickLinks: Shuttle Atlantis in Orbit, Make it a Teachable Moment

Essential question: When a space shuttle launches—how heavy, how fast, how far?

Commentary on Blue Ribbon Panel Exploring NASA’s Strategic Options for Human Space Flight

Essential question: What should be the goal of human space flight?

Shuttle Atlantis Home! Prompts Me to Look at America’s Future … and I’m Troubled

Essential questions: Is the end of the space shuttle era a symptom of a larger problem for America? Are we taking science and technology education seriously?

Teachers and Parents: make sure to read about The Teacher’s Toolbox which is designed to help you put this Blog to work for your class and your children. If you’re new to Blog on the Universe read About this Blog.

Photocredit: NASA

Photo Caption: Endeavour in orbit on flight STS-118, August 15, 2007. Click on the image for a breathtaking close up view. Read more about the image, and visit the STS-118 image gallery at NASA.

This is a Teachable Moments in the News QuickLinks Post. It connects a news story with this Blog’s existing powerful library of Posts and Resource Pages. The cited Posts and Pages provide a deep understanding of concepts in the earth and space sciences relevant to the news story. Teachers—the Posts and Pages are also designed for use as lessons, allowing you to easily bring current science into the classroom as a teachable moment. Each cited Post is outlined in the Teachers Lesson Planner, which includes the Post’s essential questions, concepts, objectives, and math skills.

This is crossposted at the Huffington Post HERE.

Follow the flight of Endeavour (STS-130) with liftoff currently scheduled for Monday, Feb. 8, 2010, 4:14 a.m. EST, at NASA’s Space Shuttle website.

A different kind of countdown has begun. It is now 2010. Before the next New Year’s celebration, the U.S. Space Shuttle program will be just a memory. Those that took pride in following along as this remarkable vehicle broke the surly bonds of Earth will surely feel they’ve lost a friend, and the pain of a very personal page turned forever will linger for quite some time. Those of you that follow news of the day as daily ritual, every so often hearing about a Space Shuttle blasting off or returning to Earth, will no longer experience that quick smile acknowledging pride in American leadership and technological prowess—at least not when it comes to human spaceflight.

The older generations world-wide will tell children what it was like to see a Shuttle blast off. It’s a sight that will be preserved in perpetuity on the internet, or whatever the internet will morph into. But in just 5 or 6 years we will be telling children about that time through which we lived when the Shuttle was flying—and these children will have no memory of it, for they will have been born in the post-shuttle age. Soon, the ancient history of Apollo will marry with the ancient history of the Space Shuttle for this new generation.

You and I are not alone in our living memories of Shuttle. Half the people alive today didn’t even know of a time when the Shuttle wasn’t flying, all of them born after April 1981 when John Young and Robert Crippen piloted Columbia into space as STS-1.

What’s the future for America in human spaceflight? The current long term plan for at least getting humans to low earth orbit—which is where you’ll find the International Space Station, a pretty hefty taxpayer investment—is to hand responsibility over to commercial companies with no current track record of getting even a single human there. So I’d like to put those companies on notice here. You’ve got big shoes to fill, and a spacefaring nation that is watching. You need to do us proud.

Since sometimes words are not enough, if you haven’t clicked on the photo above to see Endeavour up close in orbit, please do. And if you have, I know you’d like to click on it again—so be my guest.

Finally, if you have memories of the Space Shuttle you’d like to share with other readers of this Blog, you’re invited to leave a comment below.

Make Endeavour in orbit a teachable moment with your kids, or if you’re a teacher, with your class. Below are previous posts at Blog on the Universe that powerfully address the science, history, and politics of human spaceflight—and all of them embrace the notion that science education is about conceptual understanding at an emotional level.

The Business Trip

Essential questions: How far is ‘Outer Space’? What does this imply for the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere?

Weekly Challenge 4: You Want Me to Do What With a Bathroom Scale?

Essential question: Why are astronauts weightless in space?

TMN QuickLinks: Shuttle Atlantis in Orbit, Make it a Teachable Moment

Essential question: When a space shuttle launches—how heavy, how fast, how far?

Commentary on Blue Ribbon Panel Exploring NASA’s Strategic Options for Human Space Flight

Essential question: What should be the goal of human space flight?

Shuttle Atlantis Home! Prompts Me to Look at America’s Future … and I’m Troubled

Essential questions: Is the end of the space shuttle era a symptom of a larger problem for America? Are we taking science and technology education seriously?

Teachers and Parents: make sure to read about The Teacher’s Toolbox which is designed to help you put this Blog to work for your class and your children. If you’re new to Blog on the Universe read About this Blog.

To Teachers:

How did I figure out how many people alive today were born after the first flight of the space shuttle?

Make this an interdisciplinary teachable moment. Here is the data for the current (2010) world population by age group, as well as the total world population. Have your students figure out how long ago the first Shuttle flew, and how many people were born since then.

Solution: Shuttle has been flying for 29 years (since April 1981). Adding together all those born in the last 29 years gives 3.5 billion people, which is a little more than half (51%) of the total world population.

Here’s an extension. Have your students figure out how many people have been born since the first landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, during the flight of Apollo 11. And since your students weren’t around then, let them live that experience through the eyes of others (including me) using these earlier Blog on the Universe posts:

Yesterday’s Launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Brings Back Memories of Apollo 11

Essential question: What was it like to live through the flight of Apollo 11—the most historic voyage in the history of the human race?

SPECIAL POST: Where Were You During the Flight of Apollo 11? Remember and Share—

Essential question: What were the experiences of people that lived through the historic flight of Apollo 11?

An Apollo 11 Personal Story

Essential questions: What is it like to meet your hero? What is the nature of human exploration?

Photocredit: NASA

This post is a Teachable Moment in the News and a Dr. Jeff’s Jeffism.

It’s been a wonderful year for me here at Blog on the Universe. We launched in May 2009, not knowing if the concept would catch on. It did, and in just 7 months I’ve had the good fortune of reaching and conversing with tens of thousands of educators, science and space enthusiasts, science writers, environmentalists, homeschool moms and dads, ed techs, and scifi fans. The Blog now has a pretty eclectic following … which is very cool.

To all of you that follow the ol’ blog, may you and your families have a healthy, joyous, and prosperous 2010! And my advice is live in the moment.

Now for something completely different (Monty Python?) While I was tweeting to my PLN earlier today I came up with some New Years fun facts and Jeffisms of sorts. Thought I’d collect them all and share them here with you. Teachers and parents, you might want to discuss these with your kids!

Ponder this: From the moment the New Year began to the end of the first day in 2010, YOU on Earth have traveled a whopping 1.6 MILLION miles (2.6 MILLION km) along Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

That’s the same as traveling 200 Earth diameters. Another way to think about it—today you traveled the diameter of Earth every 7 minutes … and you didn’t even feel a breeze.

I actually wrote a blog post about your travels through space aboard Spaceship Earth. If you liked my New Years thought above, you’ll really like this post.

Ponder this too: You may have been standing there watching the clock as it counted down to midnight. But actually … YOU were flying to the location of midnight on Earth at up to 1,000 mph (1,600 km/hr) due to Earth’s rotation. The clock was just keeping track of your flight. Did you remember to buckle up?

Fun fact: It’s 2010. Thank goodness we made it through another 31,557,600 seconds since New Years 2009. (Hummm that’s almost pi x 10⁷ —that’s creepy.)

More pondering: the location in Earth’s orbit where you marked the start of YOUR 2010 orbit of the Sun is different from someone in another time zone.  In other words, someone on the opposite side of Earth from you started their New Year 800,000 miles (1,300,000 km) from where you started yours.

Earth to other planets: hey guys, I must be at that strange, rather non-descript place in my orbit again, ’cause the bipeds are all celebrating.

Other planets to Earth: we know, we saw fireworks sweeping across your surface as their cities and towns moved into midnight. Weird critters you’ve got living on you.

Pluto to Earth: hey if you were more like me, those bipeds would only celebrate every 240 Earth years!

Earth to Pluto: yeah but if I were more like you, there wouldn’t be any bipeds here, and hey, why am I talking to you anyway? You’re not a planet any more.

Pluto to Earth: even I think that’s pretty cold.

Hey gang, ready for another orbit of the Sun here at Blog on the Universe? May it be a safe journey, and I promise I’ll try to be a good guide.

—Doctor Jeff

Photocredit: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)

Dr. Jeff on Mathematics Education

This is a Dr. Jeff’s Jeffism and a Dr. Jeff Speaks Out.

Math is the language of nature. If you yearn to know

how she operates, you must speak her language.

—Dr. Jeff

I wrote this essay because I needed to get something off my chest. It first appeared as a foreword to a Dr. Jeff’s Weekly Challenge posted on June 15, 2009, but I think it’s so important that I decided to commit it to a formal Resource Page here at Blog on the Universe. My Resource Pages are all found in the right navigation column under the section titled “Pages” and under the subsection titled “Dr. Jeff on Stuff – The BotU Resource Pages” (take a look at right.) I dedicate the Resource Pages to essays on important topics like: the Nature of Our Existence, the Art of Teaching, Scientists and Engineers as Heros and Role Models, and the Crisis in Science and Technology Education. I felt that an important essay on mathematics and mathematics education should be a dedicated Resource Page.

So here now is my sure to be viewed as an outrageous essay:

Dr. Jeff on Mathematics Education

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment on that page. Also—you can read more about this Blog’s Resource Pages HERE.

This is a Teachable Moment in the News and a Dr. Jeff Speaks Out.

This is crossposted at the Huffington Post HERE.

I had a day of meetings yesterday, with no connection to the outside world. When I got home a good friend stopped over and asked if I heard what Al Gore had said in Copenhagen, and the firestorm it created in the world media. I had not. So I made a beeline for the computer and sought out the circus-sphere passing for journalism these days. Here is what I found.

A Timesonline story titled “Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his north pole sums don’t add up”, may have been the focal point. Apparently Mr. Gore said, as reported by the Timesonline—

“These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

This led the Timesonline to conclude, that—

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

But this story did not add up to me. My problem was two-fold. First, Mr. Gore stated a dire prediction about the Arctic and attributed the prediction to Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski. Given Gore is not a climate scientist, citing his source was the right and prudent thing to do. Maslowski was apparently contacted by some organization or individual (I should assume the Timesonline but I won’t) and the Timesonline then quoted Maslowski’s denial. So here we have two individuals with differing stories, but with a distinction—Mr. Gore was attributing his statement to Dr. Maslowski. But Maslowski was not attributing anything to Gore. Clearly someone was wrong, whether by mistake or by design. But based on the story, I didn’t know which one. Which brings me to my second problem—Timesonline immediately assumed the problem was with Gore, the story was picked up globally, and quickly turned into “there goes Al Gore again, and this time we got ‘em!”

But the pesky distinction between the two was an obvious pathway for me to explore—Gore cited Maslowski, so was there any formal record of Maslowski’s past statements about Arctic sea ice coverage? I found no evidence that anyone reporting the story had bothered to look.

Is this what journalism passes for these days? No need to check sources carefully? Forget due diligence? Gore caught twisting the truth—even lying—is good for sales and readership? And it doesn’t matter whether he did or not, because perception is reality today, not truth?

Earth to journalists. Let me clue you in. I’m not a journalist but I’ll do your due diligence for you. It’s REALLY easy in the age of the internet. Here, let me show you how it’s done.

Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski is a Research Professor in the Department of Oceanography at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California. All this is from his bio on the NPS website. His research includes: arctic oceanography, numerical ocean and sea ice modeling, and climate change—again from the NPS website. He sounds like a qualified expert to me. Apparently the media has thought so too. Here is what Dr. Maslowski told the New York Times, October 2, 2007 (just 2 years ago)—

“Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter’s freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit. At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013.”

Want him in his own words? Here, at Beyond Zero Emissions, is Dr. Maslowski interviewed by Matthew Wright, with a post date of March 24, 2008 (less than 2 years ago.) Read the transcript of the interview, and by all means download the podcast.

“We speak to Wieslaw Maslowski about his prediction that by the summer of 2013, we will have completely lost ice cover in the Arctic. Dr. Maslowski says that the complete loss of summer ice may actually happen sooner.”

Wright: “Ok. So now, it was reported in The New York Times that you said that 2013 was a possibility, and perhaps you’d actually projected this some years ago, that we could lose the summer sea ice extent – that’s in the summer solstice is it?”

Maslowski: “That is correct.”

Maslowski (later in the interview): “There are some model simulations, single model simulations, that are suggesting that it could possibly occur as early as 2050 or maybe even as early as 2030. Comparing those models simulations predictions with the satellite observations of the Arctic sea ice extent actually shows that most of those models are too conservative predicting the current and the past ice extent changes in the Arctic as has been observed. So the idea is that the climate models – they’re underestimating, they are too conservative in their prediction.”

Maslowski is on the record stating he thought it possible that we’d lose all summer ice cover in the Arctic by 2013. Let’s do some math. That is 3.5 years from now.  Gore said 75% chance in 5 to 7 years based apparently on personal conversations with Maslowski. You know what? Gore’s statement was a CONSERVATIVE estimate relative to what I found Maslowski has said on the record.

Does anybody care that journalistic integrity is important in the midst of a contentious debate? Will ‘journalists’ like Hannah Devlin, Ben Webster, and Philippe Naughton (see Timesonline) apologize to Mr. Gore for not doing their jobs? Will anyone give the guy any credit for standing up for what he believes in? Mr. Vice President, hang in there. I know you know how Galileo felt.

And a note to the Timesonline. Should I believe your quote from Dr. Maslowski? If so, then shouldn’t someone ask Dr. Maslowski why his quote is inconsistent with what he has said on the record? Dr. Maslowski, your credibility as a researcher is on the line.

Let’s debate the quality of the data and the interpretation of the data. Let’s do it in the context of science. As a planet, let’s explore and debate the global courses of action that can and should be considered based on what these data are telling us. And let’s do it with journalists recognizing the important role they play in keeping us all informed, and the sacred trust that that entails.

Finally, aside from the spitting back and forth on who said what (which could have been avoided if journalists did their jobs) does anybody care that complete loss of sea ice coverage in the Arctic, even if by 2050, would represent a dramatic climatic change in a geological instant in time?

For an understanding of rapid climatic change in the context of geologic time, and the correlation to human activity, see A Day in the Life of the Earth, here at Blog on the Universe.