Remote Telescope Project to Reach Thousands of Students Each Year

  • Published
  • By Jeanne Dailey, AFRL/RDMX
  • Directed Energy
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, New Mexico --  The Air Force Research Laboratory successfully launched an astronomy outreach program that provides live, remote access to an 11-inch telescope at the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing site. The program, called Aloha Explorations, will reach thousands of teachers and students from grade school to university level each year. From their classrooms, students can use the telescope to generate images and videos of the moon and other celestial objects to aid their astronomical studies.

Through an Education Partnership Agreement, AFRL is providing the telescope and dome, and Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) is providing Web control of the telescope and curriculum materials. AFRL and Georgia Tech will conduct training workshops to provide teachers with the skills needed to control the telescope from their classrooms. In the first phase of the project, AFRL is working with about 40 elementary and middle-school teachers in Hawaii and Georgia, who in turn will impact roughly 1,500 students. Beginning in 2014, AFRL will broaden the program's impact by working with other groups.

Aloha Explorations is a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) outreach project involving AFRL, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Hawaii. AFRL is committed to STEM outreach efforts to help ensure a future workforce that is ready to address the nation's technical challenges