Sessions To Be Held At Florida Institute Of Technology In
Melbourne
The International Space University (ISU) has selected the United
States’ Florida Space Coast as a natural fit to convene its
Space Studies Program as the US gateway to exploring, discovering
and understanding our universe. There are only five months to go
before the launch of the 25th annual Space Studies Program (SSP)
session at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne,
Florida, and the NASA Kennedy Space Center north of Melbourne. The
session will convene June 4 to August 3, 2012.
Celebrating this 25th SSP in the USA with the support of NASA
will be a very special event as 25 years ago NASA was already among
the supporting space agencies at the inauguration of the
International Space University in MIT, Boston. Both institutions
have been collaborating ever since. “This partnership with
Florida Institute of Technology to host the International Space
University, will be bringing to Brevard some of the best and
brightest in the aerospace industry,” says Robert Cabana, KSC
Center Director.
NASA’s mission is to pioneer the future in space
exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. Since
its inception, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) has played an integral
role in the work performed by NASA. For three decades, NASA’s
Space Shuttle fleet safely carried hundreds of astronauts on dozens
of successful missions, which resulted in immeasurable scientific
gains. Every manned space flight mission, including all of the
Space Shuttle missions, was launched from KSC.
ISU will benefit from NASA’s experts who will share their
experience with the over 100 participants coming to Melbourne from
all over the world. Indeed, dozens of NASA experts kindly accepted
ISU’s invitation to take part in the program. Amongst them
will be Robert Cabana and Janet Petro, the KSC Center Director and
Deputy Center Director, respectively. “We are profoundly
pleased and honored with the level of support that KSC scientists
have committed to the program. SSP12 will certainly be memorable
both for its location and for the quality of the academic
experience,” said Angie Bukley, ISU Dean and SSP
Director.
ISU provides an interdisciplinary education in the context of an
intercultural and international environment to support the
development of future leaders in the world space community. The SSP
offers its participants a unique and comprehensive education
covering all aspects of space programs and enterprises including
space physical sciences, space systems engineering, policy and law,
business and management, space and society, satellite applications,
and space life sciences and human spaceflight.
Each summer ISU offers this intense nine-week course designed
for post-graduate university students and professionals of all
experience levels and disciplines. The site of the SSP changes
annually, making it a unique educational concept and building on
the fundamental ISU tenant of an international experience. The SSP
core lecture series serves as the foundation on which the more
in-depth activities undertaken in the seven departments are built.
The team projects provide the participants with an international
and intercultural team working experience wherein they must not
only refine the topic as a team, but also produce professional
quality reports and final presentations, all in the span of a few
weeks.
This year, the NASA KSC is also sponsoring one of the four Team
Projects to be executed during the session. The topic of this
project is, appropriately, Future Spaceports, the goal of which is
to recommend architectures, transformative technologies, and design
processes that enable an expansion of Earth-based spaceport
capabilities to on-orbit and planetary surface spaceports. The
project will be led by NASA experts from NASA KSC.