Here are some images from the European Space Agency of space waste, mostly from satellites and the rockets used to get them there.

Leftover Satellites

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESOC/SEMN2VM5NDF_mg_1.html

from Doors or Perception and Core 77

As you all know, we have had a recent revelation as far as finding a direction for our project is concerned. Some of us have decided to use ISRO's chandrayaan 1 mission objectives as inspiration for ideas while I think it would perhaps be more beneficial to find and sell an avenue where artists and scientists could design the future together.

In our last discussion when we were brainstorming for using the origin of the moon as a hook, I thought of anthropomorphizing a satellite by giving it qualities of a complex seer of some sort. Since in this case the projected ultimate function of this seer is to retrace events of the past (mission objective), I thought of creating a model to give children a platform to express (a desperate attempt to relate to the 'extensive' research) their own logical and deduction abilities by giving them a relatively more modest satellite (a camera). Optimistically speaking this would thereby show the world of science evidences to prove that there are alternative methods to retrace the origin of any given subject.

In this case the child or perhaps cultural associations would provide answers or learning for scientists who are hot on the trail but going about it with such a narrow rigorous approach, the only way they know.

Payloads and scientific instruments do seem like a logical step in understanding the origin of a celestial object since we now know so much about the earth's chemical and mineral composition. But the question is how an alternate thinking can contribute. Can it?

But maybe the mission objective has been phrased to satisfy the tax payers, the people.

We all predict the not so distant future witnessing the colonization of the moon. One may then deduce that Chandrayaan's more viable and practical objective would be or probably is to become a treasure trove of vital information about the hot property's mineral and chemical deposits.

If that be the case then what we propose should create more transparency between ISRO and the public since the moon is personal and spiritually significant to so many cultures in India. I propose to create a module or an awareness program (with an 'inconvenient truth' vibe) that will bring to light to the billion fund providers in India how much money is required to push each kilogram into space and therefore encourage a common discussion about the meaningfulness of the decisions of such expensive projects. There can be participation from different cultures and should be something that can be transported, documented and displayed/viewed. Perhaps this would then give cultural questions some priority or a section of the fund which could probably help build the first payload that will bring back something of a different and emotional value to the people.

We presented on Thursday morning. It went off well. Got some good pointers from everyone, thank-you for being there.
Some noted that we will be taking into consideration:
Introducing Childhood stories
Rephrasing sentences
Bringing in the place study connection, moon and then finding it on earth
Introducing it from a satellite point of view
Connecting the insights/results to the goals
Clearly bridging the gap between our interactions

Next week, we are planning to re-enact our final idea to see how it goes ad to check whether we have to omit some interaction or not.
Thats all for now

International Sputnik Day
http://www.aconnectiontoaremoteplace.net/?p=111
Google Earth projection to record people's memories of places, badge making to remember lost satellites, and a satellite watching barbeque for one evening and then during the next couple of days people dropped by, often as families, to record their group memories.

Collages
The Universe Gallery
http://www.aconnectiontoaremoteplace.net/?p=92
About a hundred school girls made collages of satellites made from cut up writing about their happiest memories and ways we see time around us.

Projection
http://www.aconnectiontoaremoteplace.net/?p=89
An installation of satellites made by school children from scrap packaging, videoed against a projection of Google Earth

Thanks to Babita, found these really interesting interactive interfaces.. (alliteration)

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/education/fun-stuff

and more..

1) Learning guides:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/education/learning-guides/cookies-and-milk

2) Teach with movies

www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/apollo-13.html

Here are some of the activities we did and some of the insights we derived from our discussions we had after the activities.

Mind-mapping with students from Aditi international school
Aditi is a reputed international school in Bangalore for Children from affluent families. We conducted a twenty minute workshop with a small group of children from eight grade. The students were familiar with mindmapping so we divided them into three groups and asked them to put down their thoughts/ associations about the moon.
We looked at the maps generated and some of the key categories that emerged were -
Indian culture- Ganesha hates the moon, moon is called Chandra in Kannada
Science related- Mass attracts mass, revolution of the moon, tidal forces
Physical attributes of the moon- Rock, mountains, holes, craters
Associated objects- Blob of ice-cream, Made of cheese, looks like a football, like a balloon in the sky
Space exploration- Kalpana Chawla, Controversy around Neil Armstrong, Russia vs. USA, Apollo mission

Stories

Cartoonns/Comics- Moon is a place for bad guys, Krypton, Russian/ Greek fable (Fat lady falling on the moon to create craters
Imagination- Marshmallow factories, rabbit shaped crater, Chinese live there, imaginary friend
Childhood- Chanda mama
Feelings- Lonely, Beauty of the full moon, Makes beaches look nice, Scary like in ghost stories, la di da makes me smile
Ownership- Can Santosh’s grandpa own the moon? will people live on the moon?

Some key ideas/ insights
Stories about the moon (or even space) are derived from popular media such as Films, cartoons and comics. Stories and associations from Indian mythology and culture are hardly mentioned.
We found that associations with balloons and foot balls could suggest a tactile final product that rolls, floats, changes shape and colour in a an interactive way. Some other words that came up during brainstorming were video games, cosmic football match, kick-able bombard-able moon. The story of the fat lady creating craters took us back to Neil Armstrong's footprint on the moon and possibilities of leaving an impression to mark one’s experiences on our ‘Moon vehicle’!
Also we noticed that when space shifts out of the context of science into popular culture one’s perception of it shifts from grey to colourful. Similarly we realized the perception of the moon is completely dull as compared to the lively picture painted of the other celestial bodies. Another jump in perception is the shift between viewing the moon from afar and actually being on the moon. The lunar landscape does not capture one’s imagination as much as the moon when viewed from the earth. “There is no dark side of the moon its all dark”- a young Pink Floyd fan.

Visit to the Museum

We visited the Vishveshwaraiya Science museum in Bangalore and after coming back just put down our thoughts on what we felt was good and worked and what did not.

Really bad graphics and type (especially kannda)
Mouse in armour to prevent theft! chained objects which restricted free movement.
Many theories are practically demonstrated at the push of a button.
Colour coding of space section involved very few colours. Grey, red, black, blue and white.
Public interaction- Quiz
Walk through experience- Led display and walk through a cell. Involvement of the whole physical self rather than just our senses and fingers/ small body parts.
Was able to control actions of bodies/object ‘far away’ from us just by using simple scientific principles. (Ball movement, moving objects in soap water to study streamlined bodies etc.)
Some memento from the experience would be nice. For example, in the planetarium, one was given a printed sheet of their weights in different planets calculated from their weight on earth. (The same device was available at the museum, but did not involve a ‘take away’)

Children who live near the yelahanka market road at certad campus

For the preliminary stage of our research we had interviewed two girls monica and bhavana from our neighbourhood. we went back to meet them again as they wanted to introduce us to their other friends.

We walked to their lane in the evening and asked if we could talk to them and document the process in video. They were eager to talk but hesitant about being photographed, but we handed them the camera and asked them to shoot whatever they wanted to, after this point they were fine with us shooting them.
Amongst the new girls we met were Gamya and sucharita. Gamya's mother was concerned and wanted her to come back soon so that she could finish he homework. Gamya showed us her science book where she had copied copious notes about meteors, planets and cells from her school library in the period set aside for library work. She was very interested in science and wanted to become a doctor. Sucharita told us about her bharatnatyam dancing class and her daily after school tuitions.
We asked them how they collected information for their projects, besides going to the library. Some of them used the local cyber cafe. In school however, they have no internet access but have computer lessons about using Power Point, Excel etc.
On reaching the park we realised that our campus was just two minutes away so we decide to take them to our class. The older ones were fascinated by the Moon chart, especially by the latin translations, the lines of latitude and longitude and the craters. They said that they had never realised that the moon looked like this. Gamya seemed confused about how one would see the earth from the moon.
She wanted us to give her some information for her notebook.
They immediately started drawing on the whiteboard. They started of by writing facts and then narrating stories and even singing songs about the moon (from a popular hindi film Saawariya). Bhavana and Monica started making a Powerpoint presentation on the moon but we had to stop there as it was getting late and they needed to get back home. On the way back, they began arguing about whether the moon was actually bigger than the stars. Rina ran ahead and began measuring with her fingers how Sucharita's size changed as she moved further away. She tried to convince Gamya that the moon was really much smaller than the stars but Gamya was not convinced. She said 3 suns make a star and three stars make a moon. using some pebbles lying on the street we finally convinced her that the moon was the smallest of the three. When we reached their houses Monica's mother began asking us what we were doing and invited us to visit her when we were free.

Some conclusions drawn from this experience:

- Confirmed that the experience had to involve the whole body- jumping, running, moving
- There is a huge gap between what is fascinating for the Aditi students and what interests these children, how can our project bridge this gap?
- Parents are an important part of education- how can we connect with them through our project.
- Fascination with the scale of the moon compared to ourselves and the earth, with what it really feels like to be on the moon, looking at our planet from the moon.

Confirmed that the experience had to involve the whole body- jumping, running, moving
also the impportance of being able to
there is a huge gap between what is fascinating for the Aditi students and what interests these children, how can our project bridge this gap?
parents are an important part of education- how can we connect with them through our project.
Fascination with the scale of the moon compared to ourselves and the earth, with what it really feels like to be on the moon, looking at our planet from the moon.

Yesterday i saw a Ted talk by Sir Ken Robinson that I think will be helpful for all of us to figure out what really is the 'learning' we want to create through our project.

Checkout the link http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

He proposes that learning should be about creating creativity- it's fun and witty and rally gave me something to think about.

We put down all our insights and findings on post-it notes and stuck them up on the wall next to a relevant picture to make them more visual and easy to read and look at. Now, eveytime we pass the wall, we can add any new ideas that pop up in our minds which makes it easier to collate all the charateristics we find interesting/exciting. From these, we had a small discussion of what traits we would like in our end product. Some of the words that came up were: Tactile-inspired from a science musuem display, Bodily experience (something that involves the whole body)-inspired from the 'Walk through a cell' in the musuem, something that would increase the sense of wonder in a child, or make him/her want to know more about the specific topic etc.

Next, we intend on doing a small workshop with the children from Aditi school, more boys, since most of the kids we have spoken to until now have been girls. Then we intend to work with Joanna to see how we could proceed with our research and reach our output.

Last week after having effortlessly fixed up a meeting with Rakesh Sharma the 138th man and the first Indian Astronaut on space aboard the Russian spaceship Soyez T-11...we were able to get the most insightful information required for our moon mission .Mr.Sharma who was on a mission along with two other Russian cosmonauts undertook spectral photography of Northern India in anticipation of the hydro electric projects.

We did come out with a sense of elation knowing that India is on the top of the list along with Russia, china and the U.S when it comes to space exploration and our remote sensing satellites beaming information have varied uses in the field of agriculture, telemedicine, climate, seasonal information, fisheries etc

Education in general he feels is a lot to be desired and space education needs to be imparted to kids using more myriad and visual means starting from comics and moving on multi media and animation.Children to whom the future belongs need to know whats interesting out there ,what are the strides mde in the space and exploration of outer space and if colonies and colonisation on moon or other places other than earth is inevitable then we need to demystify or using wonder and mystery as hooks get the interest generated .

Space as explained in Mythology or stories ,fiction and fantasy is actually a dull and drab area and the economics of sending this mission does not allow them to gaze at gaze and wonder at the amazement it unfolds.Each kilogram of anything to be pushed into space costs a huge amount of money and private funding which is the order of the day does not allow for any frivolities.

When Joanna asked iif he thought artists had a space ,he said there was but they had to wait because they would come in once the scientists had ensured that it was safe and they would like the moon to have more vegetation,grass or anything which took away the monotony .Yeah when space travel is like civil aviation affordable by most of them.

The chandraayan mission only goes on to prove that India has the capability to indigenously conduct the mission at a cost which is less than a lot more missions.

There are other payloads which are piggybacking on the chandrayaan which goes to show the confidence other countries have on our capabilities.

We came away with the feeling that India is on the right track when it comes to space and its commitment to further exploration for peaceful purposes.

Some trivia:

It took 90 mts to go around the earth once.

8 minutes to go past Indis

Their shuttle was orbiting 55 degrees to equator

The speed increases from o to 8 sec per km in 8 minutes