Photo credits: ESA/ID&Sense/ONiRiXEL
Scientix is an active supporter of the annual World Space Week campaign and this year it was a great pleasure to see the number of activities carried out to raise awareness about space science. For Scientix, it is important to increase collaboration between schools and the scientific community. In order to achieve this, Scientix invited educators to have their articles on the subject of space science published here on this blog. Five articles were published for the duration of the World Space Week from 4 to 10 October 2018 – demonstrating how diverse and exciting space science can be!
In addition to this, Scientix shared suggestions on its Twitter page for useful space related resources and teaching materials from the Scientix repository every day of the week. Each day was dedicated to a particular theme in space science. Those were:
- 4 October – Earth- and space-based instrumentation
- 5 October – Solar system
- 6 October – Our fragile planet
- 7 October – Famous figures in space research or Space discoveries
- 8 October – Living on another planets
- 9 October – Space exploration
- 10 October – Space careers
This is the last day of the #WorldSpaceWeek and we are dedicating it to the subject of careers in space sciences! This is a great booklet made by the @space_awe project featuring various career opportunities in this field @WorldSpaceWeek https://t.co/AiKXEElgpA pic.twitter.com/rdSnBQYcdJ
— Scientix (@scientix_eu) October 10, 2018
Already on 4 October, the first day of the World Space Week, anyone could participate in an open webinar about space careers led by two astrophysicists Dr Agueda Gras-Velazquez and Dr Anastasiya Boiko from European Schoolnet. They presented their research activities in the field of space science and how their studies led them towards their current career path in science education.
On the last day of the World Space Week, Euronews invited educators and students of the Scientix community to participate in a live broadcast from the facilities of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. The participants could ask Tiago Soares, a Clean Space Scientist at ESA, any question that came to their minds about space science, moderated by Jeremy Wilks, Producer at Euronews. This first time experiment and collaboration between Euronews and Scientix proved to be a great success – which engaged students all down to kindergarten levels and up to very experienced science teachers.
All of those activities organised demonstrated how scientists and schools can be brought together in a simple way, through the means of technology, allowing both students and teachers to get first-hand information from someone who is working on a space mission. Hopefully, this kind of collaboration will be model for any World Space Week to come.
Author: Róbert Hlynur Baldursson, Science Projects Communications Coordinator at European Schoolnet