NASA Awards Five Universities Funding For Learning Opportunities

June 28, 2012

Sonja Alexander/Joshua Buck
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
sonja.r.alexander@nasa.gov / jbuck@nasa.gov

Rachel Kraft/Kelly Humphries
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov / kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov



MEDIA ADVISORY: 12-220

NASA AWARDS FIVE UNIVERSITIES FUNDING FOR LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded five one-year U.S. National Laboratory
education cooperative agreements to provide hands-on science and
engineering opportunities for college and university students.
Experiments proposed in two of the projects will be flown on the
International Space Station in the near future.

Students at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg,
Miss., will study the feasibility of incubating organisms in a
simulated Martian environment. Undergraduate student teams at Purdue
University in West Lafayette, Ind., will use the Capillary Fluid
Experiment hardware to investigate fluid physics in microgravity and
work on the project with students at North Carolina Agriculture and
Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C.

Three universities will use funding for ground-based experiments. San
Jacinto Community College in Houston will coordinate a challenge for
college students to train in underwater robotics and coach middle
school science classrooms to build and operate underwater robots.
Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, will train students
in project management in conjunction with HUNCH, which is short for
high school students united with NASA to create hardware. Graduate
students at the University of Houston will provide systems
engineering expertise to HUNCH participants.

The agency solicited proposals in February in areas within the
International Space Station's National Laboratory Education Project
and is awarding about $863,000 collectively to the five institutions.
The project strengthens the link between the unique venue of the
space station and science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) education. It serves as a resource to enable education
activities aboard the space station and in the classroom, through the
web and on mobile media.

For more information about NASA's education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

For more information about the U.S. National Laboratory on the
International Space Station, visit:


http://go.nasa.gov/issnatlab

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov


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