Take your classroom into space - OasISS education kit
Educators throughout Europe were invited in 2008 to propose new ideas for experiments to demonstrate the effects of freefall. The two best experiment ideas 'Do objects have weight in space?' and 'Exploring capillarity' were selected to be performed on the Columbus laboratory of the ISS during the OasISS mission by ESA astronaut Frank De Winne.
An education kit containing the same hardware De Winne will use in orbit is now also available for free to European teachers on a first-come first-served basis. The kit comes with a teaching guide that provides step-by-step instructions to help perform the demonstrations, exercises and questions, as well as an introduction to ESA, the ISS, and the freefall environment.
Live event
The demonstration will be supported by a live inflight call, featuring De Winne performing the experiments and answering questions from students. The inflight call is currently scheduled for 21 September. The event is currently being organised in the home cities of the winning teachers: Barcelona, Spain (Cosmocaixa), Mechelen, Belgium (Technopolis), Milan, Italy, and Thessaloniki, Greece (NOESIS).
Further information can be found on ESA's Human and Spaceflight page.
