Wow! How can I get my daughter involved? Do we have to move to San Antonio? 

This seems like a great opportunity for the kids. Can you imagine spreading this to other locations? What are the key features that make it successful?

We are currently piloting the program in San Antonio and developing the materials to disseminate in the future. We are nearing the completion of our first student cohort's year 1 project which culminates with the launch of remote sensing experiments in June on a high altitude balloon. Our goal is to spread this opportunity globally. A key feature that makes our program successful is the partnerships. We have K-12 partners, higher education, business/industry, parents, and other community partners that play minor to major roles in our project. From curriculum development to water and snacks for our students, our partners make it happen.

This looks like such a great project. How many kids are involved each year? How do you recruit them? Is it after-school or integrated with school curricula? Is there a research component to find out the impact that you are having on participants as they continue on? You made me so curious! Great video. 

What questions do you have? Any suggestions or resources we could use in our programming? Our students will begin the process of writing a space-themed comic book in collaboration with our partner TAME (Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering) in 2018-2019. Eventually it will be published and available on the TAME website

Wow!  I am so impressed by what you are doing.  I dearly wish I had known about this when I was these kids' ages.

How do you see your kids grow, change or evolve throughout the program?  What skills do you see them develop?

Wowza! This is amazing. What an incredible opportunity for these students. Is this a summer program? After school program? Your set-up is outstanding. Where does the funding come from and how do you plan to expand? 

This is very cool. So many ways that you integrate real or realistic experiences so students can really engage with the issues and get a sense of what scientific investigation is about. You said you're seeing evidence of student gains in how to design an experiment, how to work on a team, and increased confidence in their abilities as scientist/engineer. I'm sure you've got some great stories, but I wonder how you're studying these (and other) differences more systematically?

This is greaty, finally a real world space science program for middle and high school students, reminds me of Sputnik and the U.S. race into space.

Hello my friend! Joules, my Georgia wants to be an astronomer. Her best friend has done PREP the last two summers and is hoping to this summer too. How can I get Georgia to be a part of this cohort. She will be a freshman and our plan was to take Geometry this summer so she can take Calculus 2 by the time she’s a senior, but this sounds amazing! Her dream is to work at NASA. 

Call me!

Hi Joules—this looks like such a fun and fascinating project! Thanks for sharing it. Could you imagine giving young people in different parts of the country the opportunity to explore the cave using something like a drone, or some other robotic technology? It seems like that might be a fantastic opportunity to bring many students into this experience who might not have the opportunity to get into the cave because of proximity.

Thanks for sharing your work!

This is an excellent program.  Looking forward to more updates!

For Daniel Damelin and James Diamond comments:

As Joules mentioned, we do have goals to spread this program model globally. We are currently working with partners in South Korea, Mexico, and the European Space Agency for funding and implementation planning.  You can read about how we envision this in our published paper at this link:

LEAP2_AND_LCATS_INDUSTRY_CLUSTERS_A_FRAMEWORK_FOR_LUNAR_SITE_TECHNOLOGY_DEVELOPMENT_USING_GLOBAL_SPACE-STEM_EDUCATION_AND_GLOBAL_SPACE-INDUSTRY_DEVELOPMENT_NETWORKS