Former astronaut Leland Melvin, NASA’s associate administrator for education, speaks about the Exploration Design Challenge as Orion
manager Mark Geyer, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson look on.
Photo: Robert Pearlman/collectSPACE.com
Contest challenges students
to design new radiation shield
NASA is challenging school-children to protect their
future ride into space. The agency’s Exploration Design
Challenge (EDC), announced March 11 during an event
at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, engages U.S.
students in kindergarten through high school in helping
to solve the known problem of increased radiation
exposure encountered on flights into deep space.
“If not all of us, most of us remember the immortal
words associated with the 1970 Apollo 13 mission,
‘Houston, we have a problem,’” said NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden while standing before a mockup of the
agency’s new Orion crew capsule. “Today, we are here
to announce an effort in partnership with Lockheed
Martin and the young people of America that will allow
us to take about a year from now to proclaim, ‘Houston,
we have a solution.’”
Through teacher-led classroom activities and, for
the older entrants, access to the resources to design,
and perhaps build and then fly into space a prototype
radiation shield, students from across the nation will be
able to contribute to the first flight of the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle (MPCV), the Exploration Flight
Test (EFT-1), targeted for launch in September 2014.
“When Orion takes its first flight in 2014, that’s next
year, it’ll travel farther into space than any spacecraft
Authored by Robert Pearlman, this article
appeared first at collectSPACE.com.
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developed for human spaceflight in the 40 years since
our astronauts returned from the moon,” Bolden said.
“This will require new technologies, including new ways
to keep astronauts safe from deep space radiation.
That is the purpose of this challenge and we’re excited
that American students will be helpin rW26