3Com provides e-networking capabilities for Mission Operation Center at UCSD for Space Shuttle Mission

San Diego 16 Feb 00 3Com Corporation announced that images from EarthKAM, a NASA-sponsored program that enables middle school students to take photographs of the Earth from a camera aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, will be transmitted to and stored on a 3Com e-Network for education. Over 11,000 middle-school students from the United States, Germany, France and Japan will use interactive Web pages to monitor the shuttle's flight path and to select areas of interest to photograph.

As part of its mission, the space shuttle, which launched into space today, will use the EarthKAM digital camera to collect highly accurate, high-resolution pictures of different areas of the Earth, including mountain ranges, valleys, deserts, coastal plains and forests. Over 11,000 middle-school students from the United States, Germany, France and Japan will use interactive Web pages to monitor the shuttle's flight path and to select areas of interest to photograph. The image requests are sent to the shuttle through the Mission Operation Center network - the 3Com e-Network - at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Within hours, students can access the digital images on the Web and then use the images to conduct their own investigations of Earth.

"Technology is giving students greater access to resources across the globe without leaving the classroom," said Rose Rodd, education industry manager at 3Com. "3Com is a global leader in deploying e-Networks for education that transform teaching and learning. Our collaboration with NASA's EarthKAM program offers a remarkable opportunity for teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum and create dynamic learning environments."

"Students can use the images not only to learn about math, science and geography, but also to learn about how to use computers and the Internet," added Rodd.

High-speed 3Com e-Network for Interactive Learning from the Space Shuttle

3Com's e-Network solution, based upon its CoreBuilder(R) switch, provides the networking application support, bandwidth availability and user access necessary for such a rigorous and extensive project as this EarthKAM program through the space shuttle.

3Com's CoreBuilder 7000 switch is the backbone of the EarthKAM's Mission Operation Center, which is based at the University of California, San Diego and manages the system that supports the EarthKAM program, headed by Dr. Sally Ride.

"Having the 3Com network has been essential. It allows us the networking capabilities to handle this exciting project with the space shuttle for middle-school students worldwide," said Alann Lopes, chief technical officer for EarthKAM at the University of California, San Diego. "With 3Com, we migrated from a 10 megabits per second shared network to a switched Ethernet/ATM network giving faster, reliable access to our databases and giving us the ability to move multi-megabyte image files throughout the network at near wire speed."

The University of California, San Diego has overall responsibility for coordinating the EarthKAM program. Undergraduate university students with the support from advisors are operating the EarthKAM Mission Operation Center. The center processes the image requests from the schools before routing them to the Mission Control at Johnson Space Center. The schools interact principally with EarthKAM UCSD during the month leading up to the mission and especially during the mission, receiving information, updates, and support from UCSD on the practical and educational aspects of the mission. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Science Data Processing Systems group operates the EarthKAM data system through the San Diego Supercomputer Center. This is the same JPL group involved with the processing of images from the Mars, Galileo and Voyager missions.

More details about EarthKAM from the EarthKAM Web site http://www.earthkam.ucsd.edu/

 

Ad Emmen

[News on Advanced IT]   [Calendar]   [Analysis]   [IT in Medicine]