The 2024-25 edition of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) educational Space Brain Hack is back with a new challenge.
It was just this past June that the winners of the 2023-24 challenge were announced. For that challenge students had to “design a food production system that creates fresh food” for astronauts on a one-year mission on the Moon.
This years challenge is very different and has to do with satellites and the environment. By way of background to the challenge, the CSA provides this background.
“For over 60 years, Canadian experts have been using satellites to monitor our environment from space. Canada’s vast and changing landscape, including its cities, forests, coasts, and climate, require systematic monitoring and analysis, and needs for high-quality satellite data are constantly increasing. Weather forecasting, transportation planning, emissions reduction, climate change adaptation, emergency management response and recovery, public health monitoring, freshwater management, ocean protection, and food production are all examples of applications that are obtained more effectively from satellite data. Satellite missions also have environmental impacts – reducing those impacts is the theme of this year’s Space Brain Hack.”
The challenge? Students “are part of an international effort to reduce the ecological footprint of satellite missions.” They must “”ensure these essential tools for climate monitoring are responsibly and sustainably designed, made and operated by finding ways to ‘green’ one phase of a mission’s life cycle.”
Teachers will find an educator’s guide, toolkit, worksheet, FAQ, submission and more at the Space Brain Hack wesbite.
