'Story Time from Space' Raising Funds to Put Kids' Science in Orbit

A few years ago, educator Patricia Tribe was cooking spaghetti and contemplating a tough question: How do you keep science in schools while still making enough time for literacy?

By 2011, the now-former director of education at Space Center Houston saw her vision realized: Astronaut Alvin Drew read a book by children's space author Jeffrey Bennett on the International Space Station during the STS-133 space shuttle mission.

"He read 'Max Goes to the Moon'" (Big Kid Science, 2012), Tribe told Space.com. Bennett was happy to contribute to the project, but at first didn't believe the messenger, she joked. "He thought it was a prank call." [Space.com's Favorite Sci-Fi and Space Books]

Four years later, Tribe's "Story Time from Space" group is bigger; members include Drew, Bennett and former Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason. There are now five books from Bennett on the station, launched on an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares flight in January 2014. Several astronauts have read the books on video in the past year. But Tribe's group now wants to add science experiments to the stories.

The group is asking for $55,000 on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. They've raised a little more than $3,000 to date, and a Kickstarter campaign last year failed to achieve its goal. Tribe, however, says the group will keep seeking money through grants if this second campaign fails.

"We're not stopping, that's for sure," she said. The Indiegogo campaign concludes April 25.

The science experiments will deal with nine topics: balance, buoyancy, free fall, heat transfer, light, surface tension, orbit, pendulums and space's effects on the human body. Items for the experiments will include a spectrometer, a sensor to measure acceleration and discs with different colors to measure heat absorption through the station's huge cupola windows.

A typical experiment will be paired with material from one of the five books on the station, like using the spectrometer to watch the light changing during a sunset, for example. Data from the experiment will then be included in the lesson plan, which will be tailored according to student age (from primary school to university).

Despite the wide range of topics, the group's experiments fit in a box roughly 1 foot (30 centimeters) square that weighs only a couple of pounds (about 1 kilogram). They're expected to ride a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft to station on June 13, Tribe said.

The major partner for "Story Time from Space" is the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the sole operator for the United States science laboratory on the station, called Destiny. CASIS and NASA take care of the launch costs, while "Story Time", a nonprofit group, is responsible for paying for the payload creation, Tribe said.

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'Story Time from Space' Raising Funds to Put Kids' Science in Orbit