The Solar System Radio Explorer Kiosk
(SSREK)

View photos of the construction of the SSREK prototype

For Students - Learn more about Jupiter's radio emissions

• The Jovian Decametric Radio Emission
• The Discovery of Jupiter's Radio Emissions
• The Galactic Background Radiation

For Educators - More information on the SSREK project and how you can build your own

• The prototype SSREK and Parts List
• Introduction to the project
• Radio observations of Jupiter - What can you can learn from sound?
• Goals of the SSREK
• Objectives to meet these goals
• Summary of the SSREK project
• Our Partners
• SSREK and Underserved Communities
• The future of SSREK

There is a lot to learn about the universe outside of what you can see with your eyes. The Solar System Radio Explorer Kiosk (SSREK) will teach visitors about radio waves from Jupiter and the Sun and what they may be telling us about these worlds. The SSREK will also show that the senses of hearing and touch are viable ways to learn about these emissions. Through the innovative rendering of radio astronomy data, the SSREK will impart to the public the excitement of scientific discovery and inspire and motivate a new generation to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, especially students that are currently underrepresented in these fields.

Twentieth century astronomy may be most remembered by its expansion into regions of the electromagnetic spectrum in which we are all blind. To interpret these data, astronomers convert them into images with "false colors". In 1955, Jupiter was discovered to be a strong source of radio emissions. Jovian radio emissions were routinely converted into audio signals. Listening to Jupiter can be a means of identifying the different types of Jovian radio bursts, distinguishing Jupiter from background noise and providing information about Jupiter's magnetic environment.

• to have visitors share in the excitement of space science discoveries, learn about the radio waves from Jupiter and the Sun and what they may be telling us about these worlds
• to have students recognize that a career in science is an option even though they may have a visual or other impairment and understanding that there are other ways to study the universe besides visually.
• to promote and expand this project to other sites

Objectives to meet these goals are:

• engage and teach the public through interactive software that will render both live and pre-recorded radio data from Jupiter and the Sun into sound and visual displays and provide tactile representations of Jupiter and its radio data
• partner with educational institutions and leverage the established NASA Radio Jove E/PO project.
• develop a website to disseminate plans and software for use by other science centers and through our partners promote this project at conferences.
  

We will build an interactive museum kiosk. The kiosk will be shaped like a video arcade game but designed to be wheelchair-accessible. It will have Internet access to receive live radio data and will render these data as sound and as a visual display on the screen. The display will be reproduced on a video projector above the kiosk to attract visitors.

We will teach visitors to identify radio emissions from Jupiter and the Sun after hearing samples of each. Since these scientific data will be conveyed as sounds, visitors will recognize that they are capable of identifying Jupiter or the Sun using only hearing. The SSREK will also allow visitors to learn more about what these bursts tell scientists about conditions at Jupiter or the Sun. As another activity, the SSREK will display a visual rendering of a sound sample. Visitors may recognize patterns in the sounds reproduced in this plot. A tactile representation of this plot will be mounted on the kiosk to assist visitors who are blind to gain this same understanding. Since visitors spend a limited time at any given museum exhibit, they will be directed to the SSREK web site for more information. This site will also serve as an archive of the software and detailed plans of the project enabling other institutions to more easily replicate their own SSREK.

We will be working with the NASA E/PO project, Radio Jove. Their network of radio telescopes streams live data from sites in the USA and Europe. We expect one or more telescopes to be well-positioned to receive either Jupiter or the Sun during museum operating hours. We also have access to their archive of several hundred sound files of Jupiter and the Sun. We have established partnerships with the Maryland Science Center (MSC) and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) both in Baltimore, MD. They will assist in the design, development, testing, execution and dissemination of this project. MSC staff will ensure that the SSREK is well designed for the museum environment and NFB will ensure that we do not impede visitors who are blind from participating.

The proposed SSREK is designed to provide the audio and visual capability to support different learning modes, thus making learning easier for the physically or developmentally challenged. We have formed partnerships with organizations that are already strongly devoted to reaching out to underserved/underutilized groups in science and technology. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Jernigan Institute is working to establish the National Center for Blind Youth in Science, a clearinghouse of information related to nonvisual methods for participating in science and the contributions the blind can make to scientific endeavors. The Maryland Science Center (MSC) reaches over 800,000 people every year. Of all the people who visit MSC annually, 173,000 are teachers and students on field trips and 21,000 of those are from public schools in Baltimore City where 86% of the enrollment is underserved minorities. This project intends to empower ALL audiences especially students and the general public with disabilities to share in the excitement of space science discoveries.

The Solar System Radio Explorer Kiosk project will have high potential for wide dissemination because, (a) the kiosk will be made to be portable, (b) the kiosk will be designed for low cost replication, and (c) much of the information will be accessible on the Internet free of charge. The portability of the kiosk is important because we envision the SSREK moved to different museum and educational sites. These sites include large and small museums, science centers, and planetariums, and other venues like shopping malls, and libraries.

After the SSREK is built and tested, all the software and hardware design work will be made available for others to replicate. This would allow multiple kiosks to exist at different locations and, therefore, will allow for more access to students, teachers, and the general public. The costs to replicate the model will be relatively small (few thousands of dollars) such that individual museums or educational centers or schools could build their own kiosk.

Another component of the project is a fully developed and interactive set of web pages. These web pages, similar to the kiosk, will contain audio feeds from observatories, as well as information on historical and scientific aspects of Earth, Jupiter, and the Sun. Therefore this "remote" accessibility to the SSREK will greatly broaden the impact of this outreach project.

Active dissemination of the SSREK replication plans and software will be done with the assistance of MSC staff at educational, museum and planetarium meetings, e.g. the Association of Science-Technology Centers Annual Conferences, with special emphasis on Accessible Practices Workshops at those conferences.

We are in the first year of a three-year NASA education grant with which we will building a self-contained exhibit on the radio exploration of the solar system. We begin this project with a prototype which serves as a proof of concept of the final product. In this temporary, limited production we seek to gauge the usefulness of our design and demonstrate our ideas for the kiosk to our partner institutions as well as to other interested parties. The following information pertains to the prototype only. The final kiosk will be substantially modified.

Parts List