美國高中生在太空總署噴射推進實驗室的暑假

除了上暑期輔導外，我們可以給學生什麼樣的暑假? 學生的暑假活動是否可以更有啟發性? 更有意義? 更有助於他往後的學習?

今年暑假，美國太空總署(NASA)噴射推進實驗室(JPL)提供300多位美國高中生一個充滿挑戰性的暑假。他們可以參與冰雪圈(Cryosphere)監視，或是參加木衞二--木星系統任務小組，測試任務軌道的合適性，或是加入ATHLETE月球六足機器人計畫小組，進行影像處理工作，讓機器人可以自動搬運貨物。

以下是三位參與這項NASA/JPL教育計畫的高中生訪談:

文字稿如下:

My (High School) Summer at JPL (09.14.09)

Dot Silverman:

I'm working on classifying different features on the Earth's surface by analyzing remote sensing data from satellites orbiting Earth.

I was...very exciting, [laughs] because it works. I took a lot of different pictures.

I wrote an algorithm, a cryosphere algorithm, classifying ice, dark ice, water and land.

I came here and, truthfully, I didn't know what an algorithm was.

You pick a lot of stuff up here. And it's nice, because there's so many opportunities to learn new things.

Pepito Escarce:

I'm working on the Europa Jupiter System Mission. I'm working with their team.

And I'm working on the project that possibly will be sending an orbiter to Europa in 2020.

We're helping them determine if the trajectory they have right now is in fact the best trajectory.

The engineers were joking that I could go to college, get a master's, get a PhD, come back and the satellite still would barely have launched.

I think the greatest thing about this experience has been getting to go around and look at all the different parts of JPL, because there's just so much that the...that the Lab does.

Even if I like what I'm working on now, there's just so many other things I could work on.

If...if I ever came to work here. Which would be really neat.

Jourdan Hoapili:

Currently I'm working on ATHLETE, the robot. And I kinda do an image processing deal, where I can make it autonomously pick up cargo.

The basic idea is that it would be going to the moon.

And it would be able to manipulate and move and help astronauts pick up cargo, move around habitats, stuff like that.

It's amazingly cool. I could be doing some boring task or something. But, no. I got to work on a really cool robot. And it's exciting.

And maybe, one day, you know, if it's on the moon, I'll be like, whoa! You know, I worked on that! That's cool!

And if I ever see, like, it go pick up cargo, or, like, I see a marker, I'll be, like, Hey, I designed that!