Get the latest news on ISS activities, launches, spacewalks, experiments and so much more.
Cost: FREE
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Get the latest news on ISS activities, launches, spacewalks, experiments and so much more.
Cost: FREE
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Link directly to NASA education programs and activities supporting ISS outreach. Learning guides, resources and news.
Cost: FREE
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Join our nationwide network of volunteers who share their excitement about the International Space Station with their students, peers, and communities! The Space Station Ambassadors program is open to adults including all educators, leaders, and lifelong learners. Connect with other enthusiasts and enjoy access to great educational resources and special perks!
Space Station Ambassadors can participate in many ways:
With greater involvement, Ambassadors enjoy increasing rewards:
Cost: FREE
Already an Ambassador? Log In to the Ambassadors Portal
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Astronauts demonstrate surprising science concepts that complement the content in Story Time From Space books.
Together, Science Time From Space and Story Time From Space offer a delightful combination of science, literacy, and entertainment through its library of free, family-friendly videos.
Science Time from Space present educational demonstrations that complement the science concepts covered in the books. Free curricular support materials are being designed to connect the science content with the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core. Educators, families, libraries, science centers, after-school groups, and others can access all the resources online for free.
Cost: FREE
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Dr. Arun Sharma is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics. He wants to improve the heart’s ability to self-repair after a heart attack or stroke. He also wants to help advance regenerative medicine toward the goal of growing healthy human hearts for organ transplants.
He helped send an experiment to the ISS to understand how microgravity affects the heart on the cellular level. Previous studies on the station had shown that microgravity changes the overall size, shape, and strength of astronauts’ hearts. But no one had looked at the individual heart cells. That was what Sharma (then a graduate student at Stanford University) and his team wanted to study.
But they had to overcome difficulties of working with human heart cells in a lab setting. Extracting heart cells is rather invasive and uncomfortable for patients. Cells extracted directly from patients’ heart tissue grow poorly and last only two weeks in laboratory test tubes or Petri dishes.
To address these problems, the team developed an innovative approach that is gentler on patients and works better in the lab. They collected patients’ skin cells (much easier than harvesting heart cells) and reprogrammed those cells to become stem cells. Then they reprogrammed the skin-cell-derived stem cells to become heart cells. This two-stage process took about six weeks to complete. The resulting cells can live for a year or more in laboratory conditions!
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who has a PhD in biology, was thrilled to carry out the experiment onboard the ISS. When she observed the heart cells beating in a synchronized rhythm, she said, “There’s a few things that have made me gasp out loud up on board the space station. Seeing the planet was one of them. But I gotta say, getting these cells in focus and watching heart cells actually beat has been another pretty big one!”
The researchers noticed that the heart cells onboard the ISS beat in a different pattern and contracted less forcefully than cells in the control experiment on Earth. “From the lessons we learn at the cellular level,” Dr. Sharma told The Boston Globe, “we can then take the next step towards building realistic cardiac tissues and, ultimately, functional human hearts.”
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SciGirls in Space is produced by Twin Cities PBS and supported by the ISS National Lab. SciGirls is an Emmy award-winning television series and outreach program that draws on cutting-edge research about what engages girls in Grades 3-8 in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning and careers. It is the most widely accessed girls’ STEM program available nationally, having reached more than 14 million girls, educators, and families to date.
SciGirls’ goal is to change how millions of girls think about STEM. Its television show, interactive website, and SciGirls CONNECT educational outreach program work together to address a singular but powerful goal: to inspire, enable, and maximize STEM learning and participation for all girls, with an eye toward future STEM careers.
The SciGirls in Space program features SciGirls NASA-themed episodes and four new role model Space Station Explorers videos of girls who have flown science experiments to the ISS National Lab. It also includes standards-aligned, hands-on educational activities to engage girls at science museums and other learning environments beyond the classroom.
SciGirls in Space also provides online professional development training around gender-equitable instruction and use of programmatic resources to five educational organizations. The free training empowers educators to guide girls in doing hands-on activities and learning about role models including female astronauts.
Watch the four SciGirls videos featuring Space Station Explorers video below or on the SciGirls YouTube channel. Don’t forget to check out the related educational outreach resources at SciGirls CONNECT.
Cost: FREE