To get more kids interested in STEM careers, one program is dangling a carrot – getting to see an experiment they’ve designed performed on the International Space Station.
Teaching STEM subjects in schools isn’t only important as an avenue for future engineers and scientists. By exposing all students to those scientific concepts in the general curriculum, we create a society that sees STEM careers as more than science fiction – as an industry all of Australia should support.
It’s an initiative that young entrepreneur Solange Cunin is working towards as CEO of Quberider, a program exposing students to computer programming through kids’ natural fascination with space.
Morality of the space race
Chris Woldhuis, Head of Student Opportunities at Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS), was leading a discussion about the space race when he and his class stumbled onto a moral dilemma. What was the space race and who won it?
“You know we all said the same thing: was it Russia? America? Then someone said North Korea and everyone laughed,” he recalled.
Why North Korea? “They said it’s not about who gets there first, but about who has the biggest bombs.”
It evoked an intense discussion on the morality of space exploration and what it means to be able to fire a rocket. Wouldhuis’ class decided a rocket was both a means of carrying humans to space, as well as the ability to send a missile.
“It got quite political,” Woldhuis said.
“It was a really powerful lesson in the ethics around rocket science.”
Computer programming curriculum
Woldhuis was able to have those thought-provoking conversations with prompting from Cunin’s Quberider curriculum that launched at the beginning of the school year. Today, more than 40 schools across NSW and Victoria have bought into the project that allows students to not only talk about space, but to design computer science experiments that will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for testing.
The curriculum was designed with year nine and 10 students in mind by co-founders Cunin, a mathematics and aerospace engineering student at UNSW and Sebastian Chaoui, a mechatronics engineering student at UTS. The program assumes no prior experience in computer programming either for the students or the teacher.
Classes enrolled in the Quberider program receive a kit with thought-provoking topics to lead them through the basics of coding and computer software so they can design their own experiments. They are given access to nine instruments that will collect data in space, from a simple real-time clock to an inertia measurement unit. The challenge is to create computer programs to test their ideas about the nature of space.
“Seeing students go on to do STEM careers will happen naturally, and when we can see those results happening it will be amazing for the country.”
In November 2016 the first set of experiments will be sent to Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a single Linux-based custom printed circuit board (PCB) with a Raspberry Pi single board micro-controller. It will then be launched on a SpaceX rocket to the ISS, where astronauts will plug it into the station to begin recording as the students have designed.
Creative instruments
Solange Cunin with Tempe High School students Marcus Garvey and Joseph Xu.Jasper Mowbray, a year nine student at NBCS, didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed up for Woldhuis’ elective.
“They didn’t give us much in the description except that it was about robotics and programming,” he said.
“I’d never done anything like it before.”
By the third lesson, Woldhuis asked his classroom who had spoken to someone else about being part of a rocket launch, and every student replied that they had.
“They all had talked with somebody else and shared some of the glory of being part of an important project,” Woldhuis said.
In designing their experiments, Woldhuis explains that they brainstormed a range of theories they could prove or disprove using data collected on the ISS: What could they learn from a gyroscope or a magnetometer?
“It wasn’t until we started linking the instruments together that they started asking great questions,” he recalled.
“We match movement from the gyroscope to the magnetometer to see how it changes how we move.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to use the real-time clock on board to align with where the ISS is relative to the Earth, and then use the magnetometer to see if there are different parts of the Earth that have different areas in magnetic interference.”
Launching Quberider
Cunin has put her university degree on hold to pursue her journey into space. She met co-founder Chaoui as an intern at the Sydney-based Saber Astronautics.
“We were the stereotypical space lovers who have always, since we were very little, wanted to be astronauts,” she said.
“We’re both very passionate about sharing the wonders of space and hopefully inspiring others to be passionate about it too.”
At the start, the pair of undergraduate students didn’t have much to go on. Australia had never sent anything to the ISS before, and had no idea how to run a program like Quberider. Cunin said they’re grateful to the start-up incubators that continue to help Quberider on its way to sending those first experiments to space.
“The confirmation that led us to follow through was having schools, our early adopters, support us and believe we could do it,” Cunin said.
The ultimate goal is for Quberider to fill a gap in Australia’s digital literacy and use. The education program aims to teach students fundamental STEM skills, such as how to code and properly analyse data, all while training for a real space mission.
“Getting every Australian student to send an experiment to the ISS would be absolutely amazing,” Cunin said.
“Seeing students go on to do STEM careers will happen naturally, and when we can see those results happening it will be amazing for the country.”
Aussie space travel
Cunin believes the Australian space industry is about to hit a new stride.
“We’re at this inflection point where the public and the political scene have opened up to the idea of the space industry,” she explained.
“So now it’s first in, best dressed if you want to do something in space from Australia.”
Quberider is one way of pointing Aussies in that direction, educating students and teachers of the value of the space industry, as well as the skills to get involved.
Anatomy of a cube sat