Saratoga Springs NASA Club
MSIP Research Report
 

In the estimation of the Saratoga Springs NASA Club, the MSIP program is the most exciting and educationally sound project that we as a club have ever chosen to participate.

The MSIP program is designed to provide participating schools with the ability to participate in real scientific research while using images from the Odyssey satellite that currently orbits Mars every two hours. The MSIP program is designed to "walk" your students through the many steps needed to complete a successful scientific research project. There is no cost to participate in the MSIP program. A tremendous amount of on-line resources are available to guide you and your students through this wonderful experience. The educational materials in the MSIP program have been designed to reflect the National Educational Standards. These materials could be integrated directly in the classroom or used as support material for a club's activities as we did.

The MSIP program is designed for student's grades 5 through sophomore in college. In all cases the students develop a research question that will be answered through image and data analysis of features on the surface of Mars. The program can be done in one of three configurations. Students can research their scientific question using archived images, distance-learning or on-site image collection at the Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, Arizona.

The following is a brief description of the Saratoga Springs NASA Club's Joint Mars Research Project:

During the 2003-2004 school year the Saratoga Springs NASA Club completed an MSIP project as a joint program with our "sister city" of Chekhov, Russia. We began this project by first contacting MSIP and enrolling in the program. We completed the necessary initial activities that MSIP designed to prepare a school as they begin the process. We communicated with our Russian counterparts using the internet for e-mail and to set-up private "chat rooms" so that we could discuss the scientific question we wanted to pose for this project. We were very lucky that our Russian friends spoke English much better than we spoke Russian. These discussions and "negotiations" last many months until we reached consensus on the tile of our joint project.

Our joint project was entitled: "The Search for the Existence of Water on Mars as Evidenced by Crater Morphology and Gully Formation". A joint group of 22 students and six teachers from Saratoga and Chekhov, Russia then traveled to the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University in Tempe Arizona for five days in November of 2003. While at the Mars facility the team was allowed to target a location on Mars that showed promise for data collection to support the research question. The Mars Odyssey satellite was then commanded to take a visual image of that location on Mars and send that image to the Mars facility. A tremendous amount of excitement developed as our teachers and students "pushed the button" to reveal the image from Mars. This image had never been seen in this amount of high resolution ever by people on the earth. During our visit to Arizona we were trained at the Mars facility for three days in the art of image enhancement and data collection. For three full days our international group bonded as a team while we analyzed and discussed the information that we were able to collect. Our teachers and students truly made friends with or Russian counterparts.

We returned to Saratoga Springs N.Y. as a team and spent another five days hosting and entertaining our Russian guests. At the end of an almost two week stay, our Russian friends flew home. During the next six months our joint student team then proceeded to further analyze and complete a written report. This report was then sent to the MSIP team at Arizona State for it to be "published" on the MSIP web-site along with the Mars image. You can visit that web-site and view our report and image.

While at Arizona State we were allowed to target and receive a second image that was taken from a region near the south pole of Mars(-67N latitude). Both our original image from -27N latitude in the region known as Memnonia Fossae, and the image at -67N can be found by visiting the Themis web-site. Our images were released for viewing by the general public on April 21 and 22, 2004. View the April 21,2004 image. View the April 22,2004 image.

The reason that this project was such a powerful event in our student's lives rests in two very important areas of discussion. The first area of discussion is that of scientific research. This was a tremendous opportunity for our students to work with some of the finest scientists and educators in the area of Mars research. The use of "cutting edge" technology and team building processes made this a project to remember for a life time. The second area of discussion is the international factor. Our students had to overcome language and cultural differences to work as a team on a very rewarding project. It is my hope that our students will continue to stay in touch with our Russian friends not only to do future projects but to be lifelong friends. The prospects of world peace and stability are greatly enhanced by people building friendships on a personal basis.

I encourage you to view our joint Mars report and to consider doing an MSIP project of your own. If the students or advisors of the NASA Club can be of further help to you in your activities please use our Contact Us section.

View the Mars Report