NASA Quest Project announces the opening of "Neuron"
NeurOn is directed toward K-12 students and teachers coordinated with NASA Space Life Sciences Outreach, hosted online by the NASA Quest Web site, with video coverage by WPSX-TV, a member station of PBS. NeurOn is located at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/
Neurolab, the last in the series of Spacelab flights, concentrates on the questions of how the brain and nervous system develop and function in microgravity. As NeurOn (Neurolab Online) becomes active, classrooms around the world will be encouraged to "participate" with the NASA team in the preparations for the Neurolab mission, STS-90. NeurOn uses the Internet and email to make the connection between the classroom and NASA.
The NeurOn project focuses primarily on the people of the project, their efforts, their successes, and their challenges. "We involve communicators, educators, students, and 'just folks' in the day-to-day reality of what the researchers and engineers in the space life sciences community do," said Rosalind A. Grymes from the Outreach Program for the Life Sciences. "We try to inspire them to 'keep the dream alive' by sharing not only the fascinating world of NASA's life sciences projects, but also by striving to share the human face of spaceflight."
Twenty-six Principal Investigators (PIs) and their more than 80 co-investigators, representing seven different countries will have experiments on this flight. Ground personnel assemble the hardware and needs like food, water and experiment supplies for the 16-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. A seven-member crew will then carry out the 26 investigations in the microgravity environment aboard Spacelab. Throughout this process, NeurOn plans to enable the classrooms to vicariously share the experiences of these scientists, engineers, and technicians in their diverse roles through biographies and field journals online.
As the Neurolab mission prepares for and conducts research, students in the classroom will participate in activities which allow them to simulate some of the activities and experiences of the scientist and engineers to better understand the mission. Curriculum materials will be made available to facilitate this classroom participation.
"While the foremost goal of Neurolab is to expand our understanding of neurological functions in space, the research will serve as an educational tool that benefits Earth-based life science research as well," wrote Jay Buckey in his article for the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology. NeurOn will respond to this broader scope by putting classrooms in touch with the people involved not only in Neurolab but also in neuroscience studies on Earth. Using Web chat technology, classrooms will interact live online with these volunteers in real time.
NeurOn joins a long list of successful online education projects hosted by Quest. You can search for archived events at: http://questdb.arc.nasa.gov/archive_search.htm
For more information contact Linda Conrad, project manager at lconrad@mail.arc.nasa.gov.
Curator: Randolph Kim
Responsible NASA Official: Mark
Leon
Last Updated: 07/02/2002
