NASA

In the spirit of boosting citizen science projects, we’re pointing to the increasing number of opportunities for volunteers — those with no formal scientific training — to encourage participation in real scientific research. These projects happen both on- and offline and volunteers are asked to assist with making observations and calculations alongside scientists.

(Remember last month’s story about how gamers helped AIDS researchers identify important an protein with the online game Foldit?)

In the same vein, Zooniverse, a website where you can find a number of online science projects, has kicked off a new project this week and is asking for your help.

Zooniverse has partnered with NASA‘s NEEMO project for a mission it’s conducting over the next two weeks. Due in part to the short duration of the project, NEEMO is hoping that by opening the research up to volunteers, it will have “more eyes on the problem.”

NEEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations. It’s part of NASA’s training regime for astronauts, scientists, and engineers for the off-planetary exploration. NEEMO tries to duplicate the space environment by sending astronauts to work underwater.

This particular mission is taking place 43 feet underwater at the NOAA “Aquarius” facility, just off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. As the project’s website explains: “An aquanaut’s time underwater is extremely valuable. SCUBA divers and personal submarines to help the crew gather huge amounts of data. We need you to be on our ground team and search these images for scientifically interesting items!”

The project is similar to another run by Zooniverse, GalaxyZoo, which asks people to help classify imagery and potentially identify galaxies based on photos taken from space telescopes. In the case of the NEEMO experiment, Zooniverse and NASA are asking volunteers to help identify underwater items like corals, barrels, and gorgonians from the raw imagery around the reef where the astronauts are training. You can give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to others’ identification, or if you spot something no one else has, you can highlight and mark that as well.

Zooniverse and NASA are hoping to test out the interface they use for these sorts of crowdsourcing experiments. What the scientists want to be able to find out is “if an interface where people confirm or reject each other’s classifications can prove more efficient than our current approach of purely independent classification.”

Using the data from the project, NASA wants to help develop data sampling techniques that it can use, not just for training, but for actual future asteroid missions.

You can sign up to participate in the experiment (just as you can for any of the Zooniverse projects), and you can opt to spend as little or as much time as you like.

Take a look and report back to us!

SpaceLab

YouTube and NASA are challenging students to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. Students from 14 to 18 years old can upload videos of their experiments onto YouTube’s Space Lab website.

A panel of scientists, astronauts, and educators, including Stephen Hawking, will judge the entries, and the two winning experiments will be conducted on the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth and live streamed on YouTube.

“The idea of seeing something you conceive and build in your ordinary classroom being actually flown on a rocket, being actually sent to the International Space Station, being actually carried out by a national, is the stuff of fiction. We think that is going to be the thing that gets kids excited,” said YouTube’s Zahaan Bharmal, who conceived of the challenge.

NASA’s counterparts in Europe and Japan are also participating in the worldwide initiative, as are Lenovo and Space Adventures.

More details: Students in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to SpaceLab. From the entries, six regional finalists will be brought to Washington, D.C. in March 2012 to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive other prizes. And from that group, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed on the ISS.

The two global winners will get to choose either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they’re 18, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts.

Space Lab is one component of YouTube’s broader educational offering, including YouTube.com/EDU, home to a wealth of high-quality educational videos from educators of all subjects and levels; YouTube.com/Teachers, a resource providing teachers with guidance on how to effectively incorporate video into their classrooms; and YouTube for Schools, a new pilot program aimed at making YouTube accessible in more schools.

“We’re at a very interesting time in the history of space evolution, obviously with the final Shuttle launch, but also with the dawn of a new era of spacecraft and space industry. It’s a tremendously exciting time to be part of space and to be thinking about space,” Bharmal said. “The world is always going to need more scientists, more engineers, more creative people to be the future of space exploration and science, and programs like this that will help inspire the future astronauts.”

Students can submit a two-minute video starting now through December 7. The video can be as simple as an explanation on a blackboard or the demonstration of a mock-up in the classroom. Every video must explain the following:

• Experiment Question: The scientific question the entrant wants to test.
• Hypothesis: An educated guess at answering the experiment question.
• Method:  A simple explanation of the methods used to conduct the experiment testing the hypothesis in microgravity.
• Results: The expected results of the experiment.

Students can submit up to three experiments in one of two scientific disciplines – either biological or physical sciences. The top 60 finalists will be announced on January 3, at which time judging and public voting will begin. Global winners (two individuals/teams chosen from the regional winners, one in each age category) will be announced in March 2012.

The announcement of SpaceLab comes at the same time as YouTube’s relaunch of YouTube.com/Education, and its YouTube for Schools pilot program, which gives schools a chance to allow the education-only site to be accessed through its domain.

Teddy bears in space, via Mirror UK

With the end of the U.S. Space Shuttle program this summer, there’s been a lot of talk about the future of manned space exploration. As the name “shuttle” would suggest, the Space Shuttle program was supposed to mark the beginning of space missions that were more regular and less expensive, an opportunity for both scientific and commercial space travel. But now that the program has ended, we’ve lost what has been, arguably, one of the more glamorous occupations that could entice students into thinking about a future career in space exploration: the job of space shuttle astronaut.

But as Spacehack‘s Ariel Waldman is quick to point out, we might be placing too much emphasis on the “astronaut” when we think about the possibilities of exploring space. After all, after 50 some-odd years of space missions, humans have only sent 500 people into space. When we think about the impact of the Internet, a technology that’s just about as old as the space mission, we can see that the latter has had a far greater and far more democratizing impact.

How then can we take the lessons and the opportunities of the Internet — all its democratizing potential — and use that to re-think space exploration? Are there ways in which we can continue to explore space even though the opportunities to send humans there seem, for the near future at least, to have diminished?

Yes, there are, says Waldman, whose Spacehack website helps highlight a variety of space projects in which anyone can readily participate.

The projects on Spacehack range from the well-known SETIQuest search for intelligent life in the universe to the TubeSat Personal Satellite kit, which as the name suggests is a way to build your own satellite.

With Spacehack, Waldman has compiled projects in which people can actively contribute to scientific discoveries. Some space exploration projects, like those long associated with SETI, have often involved people turning over their computing resources for scientists to use or involved people doing rather mindless, repetitive tasks that aid others in their discoveries. But Waldman is committed to promoting projects in which people get to actively participate and contribute — and just as importantly, projects for which they get credit for their discoveries.

An example of this is GalaxyZoo, a site that takes data from millions of galaxies that have been imaged by space telescopes and has human volunteers assess and classify the imagery. GalaxyZoo shows you images and you’re asked to identify the patterns of the stars. It’s a way to crowdsource the identification of galaxies, and the citizen scientists who’ve participated have done just that, making several important discoveries including identifying (and naming) the “Green Peas” galaxies.

Participating in projects like Galaxy Zoo doesn’t require an engineering or astronomy background. And as Waldman notes, it’s a good reminder that there are lots of jobs associated with space exploration that don’t either. After all, not everyone who works at NASA is an astronaut or astrophysicist.

Part of the work of Spacehack is also helping space exploration programs make their offerings more accessible and available to the public — removing some of the barriers and jargon that make participation intimidating, if not impossible. This is important for getting kids engaged in STEM careers, but it’s also just as important for keeping adults engaged in scientific work — even if they don’t themselves opt for STEM careers. As a recent BoingBoing article by Maggie Koerth-Baker contends, we’re failing to reach adults with science museums and science education just as much as we’re failing to reach children.

Nonetheless, Waldman believes we’re about to see a renaissance of citizen science, where people are able to participate more and, as such, take an active role in dictating the direction of scientific exploration. Pointing to the success of sites like Galaxy Zoo, Waldman argues that citizen scientists will be empowered to speak up and help actively engage in these sorts of efforts, without feeling intimidated or left out of these important discussions.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, keep an eye out for Science Hack Day, a weekend-long event that brings together scientists, engineers, designers, developers, geeks and enthusiasts to — as the name suggests — work on hands-on, DIY science projects. The next Science Hack Day in San Francisco will be November 12 and 13. Adults and kids, scientists and citizen scientists are welcome to attend.

Project Feederwatch

Student's rendering of birds.

By Sara Bernard

Scientists have figured out a way to leverage student enthusiasm in the sciences: conduct research that can be used for data collection.

So when ornithologists at Cornell University study breeding and nesting behavior, when NASA researchers need an extra few thousand pairs of eyes on a telescope, and when biologists and gardeners investigate changes in ladybug populations, they ask K-12 students to participate in the research — often as part of their regular class curriculum.

This isn’t, of course, about getting kids to do a PhD’s grunt work. It serves both parties well. Scientists acquire necessary data (sometimes even the miraculous kind, like rare nine-spotted ladybugs) while students get to work on real-world research projects.

Often, the scientific community also provides detailed lesson plans, online tools, and other resources to the students and teachers involved.

Here are 5 examples of citizen scientists programs across the country.

1) Cornell Lab of Ornithology Citizen Science program

This is a set of kid-friendly research projects on all things bird-related, from pigeons to feeder-watching to a middle school curriculum called BirdSleuth. Students can count birds and upload data using eBird and the Great Backyard Bird Count, promote urban conservation through Celebrate Urban Birds, and use photo-tagging tools to help scientists sort 8 million NestCam images. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has also created SciencePipes, a free site that allows users to access biodiversity data, create visual representations of that data, and embed them into their own Web pages.

2) Encyclopedia of Life

The project encourages students, teachers, and scientists around the world to document as many of the earth’s roughly 1.9 million species as possible. Entry points for students include the Bioblitz — or local species inventory, which allows students to upload their findings and try classroom activities — and the Field Guide tool, a way to organize species information based on location. The site (free and Creative-Commons licensed) also provides educational podcasts and examples of model projects.

3) DiscoverLife

The Bee Hunt and the Lost Ladybug Project are two limbs of the nonprofit that helps lead step-by-step ecological research projects via simple Web tools. In order to figure out why some ladybug populations are booming while others are nearing extinction, kids and teachers can spot and upload photos of ladybugs in their local communities and check out map tools and educational materials. The Bee Hunt uses similar methods to determine the effect of climate change on various pollinators.

4) Lewis Center for Educational Research’s Academy for Academic Excellence

At this charter school in Apple Valley, California, kids monitor telescopes and rockets — among many other real-world, project-based activities — and send their observations straight to NASA. NASA’s Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope, which now officially belongs to the Lewis Center’s school, is open to students and teachers across the country to use as a learning tool. Participating students get a grasp of radio astronomy, teachers receive professional development training, and NASA gets to take home information about objects in the universe.

5) Project BudBurst

A national field campaign to collect ecological data about the flowering and fruiting of plants, is a way for students (and adults) to learn about the effects of global warming from their own backyards. Participants in all 50 states have recorded their observations and sent them into the BudBurst results database. A branch of the campaign, BudBurst Buddies, is designed for young learners, complete with friendly characters, an observation journal, and certificate of completion if they make at least four contributions.