Navigation

Flying Aggies

Projects

Team Members

Outreach

Events

Pictures

Cool Links

Ask a Team Member

Contact Webmaster
Images



(Click to expand)

 

Outreach

Objective

NASA has traditionally taken a great interest in educating our nation's young people. New Mexico has historically had significant association with NASA activities and facilities. Additionally, one of NASA's centers is located less than 60 miles from Las Cruces, where our NMSU team is based. The team feels that it is extremely important to ensure that the young people in the Las Cruces area know what kind of things are happening in NASA, sometimes virtually right in their back yard. The KC-135 program gives our team a specific NASA program to talk to these young students about. Our primary goal is to present and discuss a specific example of an excellent NASA program with these future scientists.


Presentations

As part of the outreach plan for this team, we intend to present to a variety of different audiences about the KC-135 program. Each presentation will be adjusted to accommodate that particular audience. Through past experience, our team has learned which audiences need a particular presentation or activity. This will help our audiences receive more benefit from our presentations.

The core of our presentations will include the following elements:

  • A PowerPoint presentation will be given by one of our team members. This presentation will include an overview of things such as how the idea for the experiment came to be, how it developed, how we built it, the flight itself, and post flight activities. If the equipment needed to give a PowerPoint presentation is not available, color slides will be used on an overhead projector.
  • A few short video clips will be shown, documenting our activities in Houston.
  • A discussion of NASA activities and influence in the local area will summarize how our KC-135 experiment relates to local scientific efforts.
  • Information on how young people and students can become involved in NASA related programs.
  • The session will then be opened for questions to be answered by the team.


School Presentations


1. Elementary Schools (Kindergarten through 5th grade)

  • Anthony
  • Berino
  • Chaparral
  • Desert View
  • La Mesa
  • La Union
  • Mesquite
  • Riverside
  • San Miguel
  • Sunland Park

2. Middle Schools (6th through 8th grade)

  • Chaparral
  • Gadsden
  • Santa Teresa

3. High Schools (9th through 12th grade)

  • Gadsden
  • Las Cruces
  • Mayfield
  • New Mexico Military Institute
  • Onate
  • Santa Teresa

4. University Class Presentations

  • Alliance for Minority Participation Student Research Conference
  • New Mexico Space Grant Student Research Colloquium
  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  • American Society of Civil Engineers
  • NMSU Astronomy Faculty
  • NMSU Engineering Faculty
  • Science and Creative Arts Symposium
  • NMSU Alumni Reunion

 

Public Presentations

In addition to presenting to students in a classroom environment, the team will give some public presentations, which may also be on the university campus. The following presentations are tentatively planned:

  • American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
    • AIAA's international conferences bring you the latest trends and technology in all disciplines of aviation and space. In addition, they offer you the opportunity to present your research to your peers. We host technical meetings, management conferences, workshops, and professional development courses that provide a wide range of networking and learning opportunities.

  • NMSU Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium (URCAS)
    • The Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium is an annual celebration of undergraduate creativity in all fields. The symposium recognizes outstanding undergraduate research and creative projects and the faculty who have mentored them

  • NMSU Undergraduate Research Assistantship Symposium (URA)

Long Term Goals

The NMSU KC-135 team hopes to continue its involvement in the KC-135 program for many years to come. The current and past teams have gained valuable knowledge about the program due to their involvement in the program. It is our goal to pass along that knowledge to future groups of students at NMSU to aide in the continuation of the team's involvement.


The experiments that were conducted in past flights are now well documented. This documentation can be used in the future to develop senior design projects in the engineering departments at the university. An archive of all documentation produced by the team each year will be submitted to the faculty advisor for storage. This will insure that the documentation is accessible by future team members. The NMSU team hopes that proposals will be submitted for every flight campaign to follow. This documentation will help future teams understand the processes and protocols involved in submitting proposals and documentation to NASA.

The team has started to incorporate freshman and sophomore level students into the program to help get them involved in research activities. It is important to have students available to step in and replace the seniors who are graduating. As these underclassmen become more familiar with the program, they will be more comfortable taking on leadership roles in the team later on.

Last updated: April 17th, 2004