NASA and Disney Parks, which collaborated to send toy space ranger Buzz Lightyear into a 15-month orbit aboard the International Space Station, are together launching two new educational design challenges, NASA has announced.

In the Mission Patch Design Challenge, students ages 6-12 will have the opportunity to design a patch to commemorate Lightyear’s mission and the toy’s accomplishment of being the longest serving space ranger. The student with the most creative mission patch and 100-word essay will win a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and a trip to Walt Disney World Resort. NASA will fly the winning patch into space and then present it to the contest winner.

In Kids in Micro-g Experiment Challenge, students in the fifth through eighth grades are encouraged to devise experiments to be conducted aboard the space station. The 12 winning experiments will be performed by the end of the school year and videotaped for the winning schools. Find out more

Filed under: K-12 Education News