Video Archives - STELLA

There Will Be More of Us: Rachel Stagner on STELLA, ARSET & Growing a NASA Mission-Literate Workforce

Michael Taylor — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 23:31:00 +0000

There Will Be More of Us: Rachel Stagner on STELLA, ARSET & Growing a NASA Mission-Literate Workforce

About Rachel Stagner

Rachel Stagner is STEM Coordinator and science educator at Templeton Academy in Washington, D.C., and a NASA Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) Associate Researcher/Educator. Over 15 years of teaching — across physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, and a dedicated NASA Earth Science Research course — she’s developed a thoughtful, practical approach to bringing NASA science into the classroom.

STELLA in the Classroom

STELLA (Science and Technology Education for Land & Life Assessment) is a suite of low-cost, open-source instruments developed under the NASA Landsat mission, with components Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) parts. Rachel uses STELLA to give students genuine hands-on experience, circuit assembly, embedded programming, data collection, and spectral analysis in an approachable, buildable format.

One of the things she finds most valuable is the connection STELLA creates between what students can measure in their own neighborhood and what Landsat is capturing from orbit. That link between a small handheld instrument and a NASA satellite mission helps students start to see where they might fit in the larger picture of Earth science.

ARSET as a Starting Point

Rachel introduced ARSET, NASA’s free Applied Remote Sensing Training Program, at the very beginning of her NASA Earth Science class, spreading the introductory module across five or six class periods before students moved into hands-on work.

Students who came in with little or no remote sensing background began asking questions about how satellites collect data and how observations get turned into imagery.

A particular highlight was an ARSET unit using Jupyter Notebooks to map cyclone data — it generated more student excitement than anything else she’d seen that semester.

Her takeaway: ARSET and STELLA work well together precisely because they serve different purposes. ARSET helps build the conceptual foundation. STELLA gives students something concrete to do with it. Used together, they offer a natural progression from learning about remote sensing to actually doing it.

"There Will Be More of Us"

When Rachel talks about where she hopes this work goes, the throughline is community. She’d like to see professional development treated as an ongoing cycle where teachers who attend a workshop come back a few months later to share what they’ve tried, and eventually help facilitate for the next group.

She also likes the idea of a STELLA Share-A-Thon: a low-key, celebratory space where students can show what they’ve done with their instruments and hear what other students across the country are exploring. Something like comparing plant health data between cities nothing overly formal, just students and teachers learning from each other.

The hope is that each workshop, each teacher, each student who engages with these tools makes it a little easier for the next person to find their way in.

Resources

- STELLA: https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/stella/
- ARSET: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/what-we-do/capacity-building/arset
- STELLA Community Forum: https://github.com/STELLA-Landsat/STELLA/discussions

STELLA / ARSET Interview Transcript

Interviewer: Mike Taylor (NASA GSFC, Landsat Outreach Scientist) Guest: Rachel Stagner (STEM Coordinator & Teacher, Templeton Academy, DC)

SEGMENT 1 — Introduction & Background

(00:00:08 – 00:02:14)

MIKE TAYLOR: First off, thank you for joining us. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background as an educator? How did you end up teaching at Templeton Academy and what subjects do you cover?

RACHEL STAGNER: Sure. My name is Rachel Stagner. I’ve been teaching for about 15 years. I started in 2009. I started teaching in Portland, Oregon, and that’s where I got my master’s degree in education, as well as a master’s of science in teaching. And then I moved to DC — it was summer of 2018 — for the Einstein Fellowship, which I did at NASA, and then I ended up staying in DC. The next year, 2019–2020, I got a position here at Templeton Academy. So I’m the STEM coordinator. I also teach basically everything because we’re a very small school. So I’ve taught physics, chemistry, biology, various variations of biology, ecology, human ecological history, and I’m teaching a NASA Earth science research class. Right now I’m teaching marine biology, so I teach basically everything. The only things I don’t feel comfortable teaching at this point are an advanced physics class or a really advanced chemistry class. Other than that, I can teach it all.

MIKE TAYLOR: That’s great. It’s a little bit — yeah, it’s kind of overwhelming when I think about it.

RACHEL STAGNER: I’m like, oh my goodness. Yeah.

MIKE TAYLOR: So I mean, I respect you — you wear a lot of hats.

RACHEL STAGNER: That is correct.

MIKE TAYLOR: PAEMST — do you call it “pamst” award?

RACHEL STAGNER: I don’t know.

MIKE TAYLOR: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. The Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching, which was actually discontinued last year, but —

RACHEL STAGNER: In 2023, I applied and I was named a finalist. And then in January of 2024, they released the list of winners.

SEGMENT 2 — CCRI Program, STELLA & Curriculum

(00:03:09 – 00:05:17)

RACHEL STAGNER: With the Einstein Fellowship and the Aeronautics Mission Directorate, I learned a lot there that I was able to apply. Like, I did an engineering course when I first started teaching at Templeton, and we were able to use some of those things. But last summer when I did the CCRI program, we developed a curriculum module focused on the five teacher teams and the research projects that we were working on. So we created a unit plan. And I think my goal all along was to try to use that unit plan in a new class and kind of focus it around NASA Earth science research. So I learned a lot during that experience about satellites and remote sensing, and this whole class is based on that curriculum — but also helping students navigate things like how to collect data, how to pull data from NASA resources, as well as ARSET, which I always forget the acronym, but they are ARSET training programs. So they’ve been using that to help them understand remote sensing, NASA Worldview, and NASA Eyes on Earth. So hopefully all these resources are going to help them.

We are finishing up our last unit on urban heat islands right now. And then starting after spring break in April, they’re going to start to choose their own adventure and pick a topic that we’ve covered — or something maybe tangentially related to it — that they can either use NASA Earth data for, or go out and collect data on their own, maybe a little combination of both based on their interests. So that is hopefully the plan. So far it’s going well, and I hope to incorporate STELLAs maybe even as soon as next week — to try to introduce them to the students and have them do some basic experiments so they can kind of understand the purpose and the value of them. And yeah, we’ll see what happens.

SEGMENT 3 — STELLA Workshops & Growing the Community

(00:06:11 – 00:10:32)

RACHEL STAGNER: And we keep offering more this year, which is really great. So the goal there is to offer free PD to teachers. We’ve partnered with American University and the DC Space Grant to help post us and to do the hard work of finding us a place to be on a regular basis. So it’s been really great.

MIKE TAYLOR: And then, what drew you to the NASA STEM Education Ambassadors program? And what has the experience been like so far as a practicing teacher?

RACHEL STAGNER: I mean, Matt is the one who told me about it. And as CCRI fellows last year, we were invited to be a part of it. So I’m continuing it. But this year, I think the value of it, from my perspective, is the networking. I’m lucky enough because I’ve had a chance to be with NASA a couple of different occasions wearing different hats, so I know a lot about the resources that are shared — but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn more stuff. So every time we have one of the meetings, I’m hopefully learning more about the ways that people are using it. But also I think the networking is very important. For example, Nick and I met during one of the meetings — the office hours. So he and I are now hopefully going to collaborate a little bit to do something with STELLA. And he has a student who —

MIKE TAYLOR: Yes.

RACHEL STAGNER: So Matt Pearce and Nick — Nick Barbi. That’s it. Yeah. So like Nick Barbi, another teacher, is really interested in incorporating STELLA in his classroom. He’s done some work with that. So I think that’s the power. I think what I’d like to use the STEM Ambassador program for is to find other teachers who want to collaborate on projects that don’t just take place where we are, but maybe comparing data across different classrooms, different states, all of that.

And then — Ryan Miller and I and other CCRI fellows basically put on that professional development, which STELLA was part of. So that was really great. I think I learned a lot more about STELLA and also started to think about how other people could use it in their classroom. And the one that we did here in January, same thing. Like every time I’m having a chance to build a STELLA or help other people build a STELLA, I learn a little bit more about how to use it myself. And so I am continuing that knowledge.

Hopefully now I have a colleague here in DC — Brooke — who I’m working with on that project. And so there’s more of us now. Hopefully there’s more of us. It’s like that Hamilton song — like there’ll be more of us, right? Like, so we’re going to just keep hopefully doing things with STELLA so that we can all bring it to our kids, because STELLA is a great program and needs more support, and it doesn’t have the kind of built-out support that you would expect for, like, a commercial product.

MIKE TAYLOR: Right.

RACHEL STAGNER: And so I’m happy to help with some of that. And I think that’s the power of keeping up with these kinds of professional developments — it just gets more people who are interested in doing that.

SEGMENT 4 — Introducing STELLA to Students

(00:10:35 – 00:12:53)

MIKE TAYLOR: So you haven’t introduced STELLA formally to your classes, as you said, but you’re hoping to bring NASA Earth science to students soon.

RACHEL STAGNER: The students soon, likely after spring break in early April. Yeah, that was the main factor in the timing.

MIKE TAYLOR: And what does the runway to introducing that look like for you? What did you intend to do with your students?

RACHEL STAGNER: We’ve got — I think the runway to it was I wanted to have the first part of the class be the introduction to different tools. That’s where the curriculum came in, because now they’ve been learning about all the different ways that NASA Earth science research can help inform us about the Earth and how scientists do that. So the point of bringing STELLA in was to give them another tool. So as they start to think about their own questions — here’s another tool that you can use. You can potentially build it themselves. We’ll see if anyone’s interested in doing that, and then also use it to collect data. So I think that’s kind of the rationale about why and when.

In terms of the on-ramp for it, I think I’m going to model what I do with them using some of the basic stuff that the teachers and I were doing at some of the workshops — like obviously showing them how to use it, how it works, why it works. And just having them go collect data. I think that’s probably going to be the easiest thing. I’ll probably have them come up with a basic question, and then just go collect some data, and then hopefully give them some structure of how to analyze it, because I think that will also be very cool for them. Which is another reason why taking the R class is helpful, because as I get better with manipulating the data and figure out what you can do with it, I’ll be able to help the kids with that too. So that’s the goal. That’s the timing part of it.

SEGMENT 5 — How ARSET Prepares Students for STELLA

(00:12:57 – 00:15:43)

MIKE TAYLOR: Well, and in that respect, you had mentioned ARSET. So how are you using it to prepare your students, or have them use it with STELLA, so they can get a better understanding?

RACHEL STAGNER: We used ARSET the first couple weeks of the class. I had assigned them the introductory module. Like, there’s five parts of it, I think. So we broke it up over like five or six class periods where they were doing one module. And then we talked about it and they had a little check-for-understanding quiz — which, spoiler alert, was just questions from the ARSET modules that I just used for in-class understanding, which was great.

I think it was a really good way for them to be introduced to what satellites do and how remote sensing works. And I think a lot of them — they told me they really enjoyed it. And when I did it last summer as part of the CCRI experience, I found it very useful and it taught me a lot. And so I just figured that instead of me trying to fumble my way through trying to teach them a lot of that stuff, ARSET actually did a better job with all the visuals and the connections to satellites already built in. So that prepares them because it will actually give them some kind of background with which to understand what the STELLA is doing. And also whatever they choose to do for their research, if they want to —

Like, I just give an example: since we’re doing urban heat island stuff right now, if they wanted to do data collection on the ground with infrared thermometers or pollution sensors or whatever, they could actually go back and compare that data to NASA satellite data. And I think they will have a better idea of how that data is collected and how it’s used.

And at the end, I know the last module in the ARSET training is looking at a couple of examples of how to use it. So while it’s not exhaustive, I think if any kids want to challenge themselves with something that ARSET has a training for, I can also point them towards that module and hopefully help them figure out what to do with huge NASA data sets.

That’s why I like the STELLAs too, because these data sets are not massively huge — and while complicated to deal with as all data sets are, they’re not as overwhelming as a satellite download.

MIKE TAYLOR: So would you say it’s sort of a nice bridge to understanding some NASA data and making it more — don’t put words in your mouth —

RACHEL STAGNER: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think it’s definitely a bridge to help them figure out how to go from small-scale data collection to massive data collection.

SEGMENT 6 — Student Responses & STELLA Engagement

(00:15:59 – 00:19:27)

MIKE TAYLOR: And so how have the students responded to ARSET content so far? Have you seen the light bulb moments you were hoping for?

RACHEL STAGNER: Yeah, I think so. I think — I always think — it’s a small class, there’s only nine of them. So I talk to them often about what are you enjoying. Like after every mini unit I’m like, hey, what did you like? What did you not like? — which I’m going to share with Matt Pearce. But also after the ARSET modules, like after we did a kind of check for understanding quiz, like they were doing really well with that.

MIKE TAYLOR: Yes. Yeah. For sure. So I think that they’re going to be very fascinated by this, which is fun. So and then I mean, along with the data science and all that — STELLA supports a wide range of engineering skills, from circuit design and 3D printing to optical engineering and data analysis. Which of those dimensions do you think will most resonate with your students, and why?

RACHEL STAGNER: I think the analysis part, because I’m not sure if we will actually build any for the students. So while I think the engineering part is really interesting and fascinating, and eventually I’d like to have that happen — because this class is so broad and kind of focused on just Earth science in general — I don’t know if any students will choose to go that route. If they did, that’d be great. I do have a couple of kids who are really interested in engineering that I think we can build around, and I’ll push that for those kids.

SEGMENT 7 — Kenneth Leslie’s Summer STELLA Boot Camp

(00:19:29 – 00:22:00)

RACHEL STAGNER: I think the data analysis part is going to be the most useful. And probably the investigation design — like the thinking of how we can use this tool. So understanding its capabilities and then trying to come up with some kind of investigation, and then take that data and do something with it. I think that will be the most useful part for these kids.

I do know that this is kind of related-unrelated to that — another teacher, Kenneth Leslie, he came in at the end of our STELLA PD on the 24th of January. He’s actually doing a summer engineering workshop. Did you know about this?

MIKE TAYLOR: Oh, wow. I haven’t told you about this yet.

RACHEL STAGNER: Okay, so DC Public Schools has programs. One is CRI — I can’t remember what that stands for. The other one is like a summer work program. And again, I’ll get you the acronyms if you want them. But he does — because there’s not a lot of internship availability with engineering and STEM in DC proper — and he teaches at McKinley Technical High School. He basically every summer creates opportunities for the students. Some of those things are like the rover programs that NASA used to have. But this year he’s created a six-week like boot camp on STELLA. So I’m maybe helping with him. The goal was to have like five of my students and 20 of his students in this, and we’re going to start at American University where the kids are going to learn and build and 3D print everything, and then go from that to the data collection to the eventual presentation of something that they’ve created — some sciencey data and analysis.

MIKE TAYLOR: He’s a busy man.

RACHEL STAGNER: He’s a busy man. So I haven’t really been able to pin him down. He’s got this whole plan. He’s talked to Chelsea and American University and the DC Space Grant. And this is hopefully moving forward. I may or may not be able to help with that. But that’s the plan. So there’s even more in the works. And I think that Kenneth is such a great advocate for everything STEM in DC that if he gets his claws into STELLA — which he has — he will probably use it pretty regularly, which is great.

MIKE TAYLOR: And now would you recommend, like, say, him using ARSET — you know, so maybe they build their STELLA and then they need examples of how to use it and all that. So would you recommend using ARSET to start understanding some of these investigations that they might be able to make and actually do some comparisons with NASA data too, or anything like that?

RACHEL STAGNER: Yeah, absolutely. I think — oh, would you implement it? Yeah. I would basically — I mean, I think that could be part of the “how does remote sensing work” — right, and how do you take remote sensing data —

SEGMENT 8 — STELLA and ARSET as Complementary Tools

(00:22:36 – 00:25:04)

RACHEL STAGNER: And they’re not parallel tools. I think, depending on a student’s interests — especially if they’re coming in with not a lot of background information on remote sensing in general — I think it provides a good foundation for understanding that. And then if you kind of make that natural connection — like there’s just like a mini satellite in a lot of ways — then they kind of understand how it works and then even start to maybe think about what kinds of data they could collect with it and how it connects to the bigger missions at NASA or science. And again, the idea of — you know, this is what the satellites do, you’re able to do this with a small instrument and in a smaller scale around your school, around your neighborhood, around your community. It might even lead them to think about how they could compare the data that they’ve collected with the satellite data.

But also I think some of the other ARSET modules are specifically about how to use certain data sets and what to do with them. And I think that based on a kid’s interest, it could be a natural fit to help point them towards some of those resources to help them learn about what they might be able to do with the data after they’ve collected it.

SEGMENT 9 — What Teachers Need to Feel Confident

(00:25:08 – 00:27:37)

MIKE TAYLOR: As a nationally recognized STEM educator and someone who has worked at NASA — so you’ve seen both sides — what do you think teachers most need to feel confident to bring real NASA science tools into their classrooms?

RACHEL STAGNER: I think a lot of it is knowledge. One of the things that I experienced when I was at headquarters was it was like a fire hose. There’s so much stuff that NASA does and also so much educational material — that I think just the knowledge of what NASA has in terms of educational programming and lesson plans and then like these different things like the Aerokat and the STELLA and all of the different kinds of side things that people are able to do with NASA tools and data — I think that’s the most important thing, and that is the limiting factor. It’s just not well known. You know, you get these specialists that have maybe heard of a program and they’ve done that, right. But the sharing of that is somewhat limited, I think, or just there’s so much of it that it’s just overwhelming. So I think exposure is a big one.

And then I think professional development is also a big thing. Like if you can help teachers understand how to use some of these tools, that is always a great way to get them to do it. I think when you’re introduced to a lot of things — like I said, the firehose effect — you’re like, wow, there’s so many things. But then there’s often not enough time to digest all of it and to figure out what you might do with it. So good professional development helps you not only learn about stuff but also do it so that you can help your students do it later. I think that’s the key. So targeted stuff like what we’ve been doing with the STELLA workshops is great.

I think following up on that — I would like to do a follow-up session because the motivation always starts out high. You know, these teachers who come to these are self-selecting — they want to come and learn about the stuff. But then the realities of the school day and the school year and life, and not having potentially people to collaborate with, can kind of slow progress.

SEGMENT 10 — Follow-Up PD & Cycling Teachers Back

(00:27:38 – 00:28:24)

RACHEL STAGNER: So I think just following up on stuff is important too. Like if you do a STELLA workshop, let’s do another one in like three months and have these people back and then, hey, what have you done? What are you thinking? You know, that kind of stuff. So it’s like a cycle of professional development — with a lot of NASA tools, that’s important.

MIKE TAYLOR: Yeah.

RACHEL STAGNER: And I think ideally, if I were to do that, I’d like the folks who already did that workshop to possibly help proctor the next workshop. So they get the other side of the experience as well.

MIKE TAYLOR: Right. I think that would also really help as well — building those skills.

SEGMENT 11 — Advice for Teachers New to STELLA or ARSET

(00:28:31 – 00:30:11)

MIKE TAYLOR: So, for a teacher watching this interview who’s curious about STELLA or ARSET but doesn’t know where to start — what would you tell them? I know you’ve given some hints, but — I mean, ARSET’s free?

RACHEL STAGNER: I mean, ARSET’s free. So I would log in and take the first module yourself. And I think that would be a good place for a person coming into this whole field of wanting to do this in their classroom with not a lot of background information — that’s a great place to start. I didn’t have a lot of background information. That’s why it was such a good place for me to start.

And then in terms of the STELLA stuff, I think if you are someone who teaches engineering, or any kind of circuit design, or mostly computer science, I think they could probably look at a lot of that material and figure it out and maybe use it. I think going to professional development, if you have one in your area, is great. Or just — reach out. I think just finding out where you can go and build one, if you can’t build it yourself, or talking to other people who have used it — I think is really valuable. So even like the STEM Ambassadors, or any other resources that they can find, because it’s a little intimidating — you know, it’s just a really cool instrument. But if your background is not strong, then it might be intimidating. So I think reaching out to people who have used it — and I think the GitHub is a good idea to help spur discussions. I’d like to see more of that. I think that’s where you start.

SEGMENT 12 — Vision for the Future of STELLA & ARSET

(00:30:16 – 00:32:18)

MIKE TAYLOR: Finally, what’s your vision for where STELLA, ARSET, and the community of educators can go over the next few years? And what would success look like to you? And then of course, if there’s anything else you’d like to add that I’ve neglected, please feel free to do so.

RACHEL STAGNER: I think that this is going to have to kind of be a grassroots effort — teachers who want to learn more about it and who want to collaborate to kind of do those things. Right, like that. Would that be successful? To me, it’s like — I think Nick Barbi mentioned — like if we had some kind of a STELLA competition where students were able to share the research that they’d done in their classrooms. And maybe it’s not a big formal competition, but even just a share-a-thon where students are like, “Hey, I did this really cool thing.” I think that would be a success. I would like to see that.

I would like to be able to collaborate with either people here in the district — like on a small scale — or teachers in other places, to have their students do a project with STELLA and then compare that to something that I’m doing in my classroom. Like I’m just giving an example — maybe we wanted to look at, I don’t know, plant health in another city and compare it to plant health here. That’s not the perfect example, but like something that could be measured in multiple locations, right? And then the kids could be like, hey, we found this here. And what did you guys find? I think that builds not only buy-in from the kids, but also gives them the sense that it’s not just what’s happening in our classroom that’s important. Like we actually can collaborate with other classrooms and other teachers to see even more about the world than what we can measure here in our area.

So that’s what I think would be successful to me — creating these communities of practice with STELLA where teachers are talking to each other, and then maybe even having some kind of a place where students who are using STELLAs can share with each other. That would be very successful, I think.

The post There Will Be More of Us: Rachel Stagner on STELLA, ARSET & Growing a NASA Mission-Literate Workforce appeared first on STELLA.

Building Tomorrow’s Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time

Michael Taylor — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 01:46:55 +0000

Building Tomorrow's Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time

How NASA's STELLA Instrument is Multiplying Mission Impact Through Student Engagement

In a sun-drenched corner of Southwest Florida, high school students are learning to see the world the way NASA does—by measuring light invisible to the human eye. It’s August 2025, and at the Suncoast Faulhaber Fab Lab in Sarasota, twenty students are building spectrometers, collecting data from wetland plants, and discovering a career landscape they never knew existed.

This is COASTWISE (Community Observations and Analysis using Spectroscopic Techniques and Wetlands Imaging to foster Stewardship of the Environment) -making Earth observation science accessible, understandable, and inspiring to the next generation.

The Participants

Nick Barbi, founder and president of the Science and Technology Society and a NASA STEM Ambassador, sat down with Michael Taylor, NASA STELLA’s team lead to discuss the program. They were joined by Tara Bergstrom Merino, a technology professional at Bank of America and coach of the state championship Ultronic robotics team, and her son Michael Merino, one of the student participants.

Their conversation reveals how NASA’s STELLA (Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment) instrument is doing more than teaching science—it’s building pathways to careers students didn’t even know existed while multiplying the impact of NASA’s Earth observation missions.

More Than Rocket Ships

“The common answer back was, doesn’t NASA just do like rocket ships?” Tara recalled. “Learning that there’s so much more to what NASA does and that they actually work on instruments and they’re doing observational things and they engage with students and they’re doing research, I think was eye opening for the students.”

For Michael Merino, who participated in COASTWISE, the revelation was profound. When asked if he knew NASA monitored Earth from space, he admitted: “I was not aware to the extent that they do.” But working hands-on with STELLA changed that understanding completely.

“The concepts, yes, as well as the type of technology that they’re using,” Michael explained. “And as well as the extent to which NASA does, you know, take notes and record data on the environment, given how direct STELLA is.”

A Mission Multiplier: Connecting Space and Ground

Nick Barbi sees STELLA as a powerful complement to NASA’s satellite missions, particularly Landsat. “It seems so out of reach with the Landsat data, other satellite data and the imagery,” Nick explained. “If you can say this is basically how it’s done. It’s just more sophisticated and a tad more expensive than what we’re trying to do. So the concept is very similar—that exactly is the point.”

This connection is crucial: STELLA uses the same spectroscopic principles as Landsat and other NASA Earth observation satellites, teaching the future workforce ground-based methods that complement and help them understand satellite observations. Students learn why ground truth matters, how spectral signatures identify vegetation, and how local measurements relate to global monitoring efforts.

“It elevated the importance of what we’re doing to say that NASA on a much larger scale is doing this, doing it at a much more scientific level, a worldwide level,” Nick noted. “It gave it a substantially stronger rationale and credibility in terms of what we’re trying to do.”

The program also introduced students to NASA’s NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) the same metric NASA uses from satellites to assess plant health worldwide. By calculating NDVI from their own spectral measurements, students directly connect their work to NASA’s operational missions.

Nick pointed out the synergy: “We pointed out the similarity between what NASA’s doing with Landsat and what we’re trying to do.” The goal is to eventually integrate drone-based spectroscopy with ground measurements, creating a multi-scale approach that mirrors how NASA combines satellite data with field observations.

This makes STELLA a true mission multiplier, it doesn’t replace NASA’s capabilities but extends their reach into communities, classrooms, and the next generation of scientists who will use and advance those capabilities.

Workforce Development for a Earth Observation

But COASTWISE isn’t just about understanding NASA missions, it’s about preparing students for careers they might never have considered.

“I think STELLA Instruments are the greatest thing to happen—the most significant innovation to happen in STEM education since robotics,” Nick declared.

Nick pointed to a growing workforce need in the analytical instrumentation sector. “There are hundreds of thousands of instruments out there,” he explained. “Somebody’s got to run them with the technical and scientific bent and understanding.”

The answer, he explained, is “a different group of people than the engineers who build robots. This is many of the kids interested in geology and environmental chemistry, data processing. You know, math students—they may not be skilled in building robotics and electromechanical devices and so forth. Maybe scared of them.”

Tara Bergstrom Merino, who brings both a technology career background and robotics coaching experience to the conversation, emphasized the career exploration aspect: “How are you supposed to know that you want to be an architect? How are you supposed to know that you wanna do scientific data analysis if you’ve never actually been able to work alongside someone that does that with a real data set, normalize the data, put a model against it, understand the impact of that and have to do the hard work right? Not just the fun work.”

She continued: ” COASTWISE and STELLA provides them an opportunity to utilize a tool in a way that gives them information and experiences they wouldn’t have. I think then being able to work alongside real scientists and folks that built the instrument or people that use the instrument and hearing how they use it connects them to real world experiences and gives them an understanding of like how they could use what their careers could be like someday.”

Skills That Transfer Across NASA's Mission Spheres

The workforce development goes beyond just career awareness. Students gained concrete technical skills that transfer directly to careers across NASA’s Earth science, data science, and applied research spheres.

“COASTWISE allowed them to connect with a technology and a terminology that they never would have had,” Tara explained. “They got to program in a way that’s very different… They don’t do any programming over a data set to analyze data—that was something that they had never done before. A lot of them had never looked at data set that needed to be normalized before.”

She pointed out that even coming from robotics, “the amount of variables they were looking at was also much more complex than something that we would look at in robotics. I think the data component was something that is a new skill for them. I think just working with a spectrometer was definitely a new skill for them.”

These aren’t abstract educational objectives—these are the exact skills needed in environmental monitoring, agricultural technology, climate science, and countless other fields where Earth observation data drives decisions. Students who understand both satellite data and ground-based measurements become the professionals who can effectively use NASA’s Earth observation assets.

Learning from Failure, Contributing to Progress

One of the most powerful workforce development moments came when things went wrong. The new 3D-printed STELLA housings proved difficult to assemble. Rather than just finding a workaround, Nick turned it into a learning opportunity.

Two students, both freshmen at the time—prepared an engineering failure report and presented it via Zoom to Paul Mirel, STELLA’s creator and chief design engineer at NASA.

For Michael Merino, watching his classmates present technical problems to NASA engineers was transformative. “It was a very positive experience,” he recalled. “Paul was very accepting and obviously took notes of all of our feedback. And made sure to feel like our input was going to be used to better the product… We felt like we were now part of the progress that we were seeing in STELLA as well as getting a little bit of insight into what was going on behind the scenes.”

This wasn’t just a classroom exercise—it was real professional experience contributing to NASA’s outreach mission. As Tara noted: “That can be hard for a student, and even as an adult. So I think, you know, no matter what, those sort of opportunities are really educational and valuable to students. And then I think as engineers and as adults to hear from students is also allowing us to help them better their skill set.”

Multiplying NASA's Earth Science Impact

COASTWISE demonstrates how STELLA multiplies the impact of NASA’s Earth science missions across multiple dimensions:

Earth Observation Education: Students learn the same spectroscopic principles NASA uses to monitor vegetation health, wetland conditions, and ecosystem changes from space. They understand Landsat not as an abstract concept but as a more sophisticated, high-quality version of what they’re doing themselves.
Ground Truth and Validation Concepts: While COASTWISE measurements are educational rather than operational, students learn why ground truth matters and how it complements satellite observations. This understanding is crucial for the next generation who will use NASA data professionally.
Community Engagement Multiplier: NASA’s Applied Sciences program emphasizes making Earth observation data useful to communities. STELLA-equipped students become ambassadors who can help their communities understand and use NASA’s Earth observation resources.
STEM Workforce Pipeline: NASA faces workforce challenges across its Earth science portfolio. STELLA creates entry points for diverse talent in environmental monitoring, data analysis, and applied science—careers that directly support NASA’s mission.
Mission Understanding and Advocacy: Students who understand how NASA monitors Earth become advocates for continued Earth observation. They can explain to their communities why missions like Landsat, PACE, and future systems matter.
Complementary Data Networks: As STELLA use expands, networks of community-based observations complement satellite data by providing fine-scale, frequent measurements that satellites might miss—a true mission multiplier effect.

A Model for the Future

Nick Barbi envisions COASTWISE as the flagship of a larger program called IDEAS—Instruments for Discovery, Exploration and Assessments in Science. The model would use various STELLA instruments across different scientific domains, always focused on workforce development and complementing NASA’s missions.

“Robotics is aimed at future engineers and coders, while IDEAS is aimed at would-be geologists, biologists, environmentalists, chemists, astronomers,” Nick explained. It’s a different pipeline into STEM careers, one desperately needed as Earth observation becomes increasingly critical.

Tara sees the broader potential: “I think any large company should work on a model like this, right, where you’re engaging something that’s kind of cheap and accessible to as many people as possible. You can get students engaged. I have found that students, especially younger students, have such creative minds and they think so outside the box that you really want them to be engaged in projects like this.”

She added: “Students just kind of look at it however they want with their mind wide open. So I think engaging students in this and making it accessible to them with kind of a less expensive tool set can help maybe guide your overarching real modeling.”

The Bottom Line

STELLA isn’t separate from NASA’s Earth observation missions—it’s complementary to them. It’s a mission multiplier that extends Landsat’s impact from orbit to classroom, from data product to workforce development, from satellite observation to community understanding.

It teaches the scientific methods and technical skills that employers across the Earth science sector need. It helps communities connect local environmental concerns to the global perspective NASA provides from space. And it builds understanding of why NASA’s Earth observing missions matter.

As Michael Merino put it simply: “We felt like we were now part of the progress.”

That sense of connection—to NASA’s mission, to real science, to meaningful careers—is exactly what Earth observation needs as it faces the challenges of the coming decades. STELLA multiplies NASA’s mission impact by building the workforce that will carry that work forward, the communities that will use that data, and the next generation that will advance those capabilities.

Transcript

COASTWISE Interview Transcript

Participants:

Michael P. Taylor – NASA GSFC, STELLA Team Lead
Nick Barbi (Dr. Barbi) – Science and Technology Society, Program Director
Tara Merino (Tara Bergstrom Merino) – Program Coordinator, Bank of America Technology
Michael Melvin Merino – Student Participant (Senior)

00:00:08:13 – 00:00:16:12 Michael P. Taylor: Welcome. Nick. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about the Science and Technology Society and how CoastWise got started?

00:00:16:13 – 00:04:49:02 Nick Barbi: Okay, Mike, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk about what we’re doing. My name is Nick Barbi. I was, at one time, a material science scientist. Then I got into making instruments because the first instrument I worked on was a scanning electron microscope and EDS x-ray detector, and we were one of the first to do that. So the story of my life was I became an instrument maker. So that’s one connection with STELLA that we have right off the bat.

I’m still involved in selling hyperspectral imaging cameras to museums. And it’s more or less a part time job, but we sell VNIR cameras, VSWIR cameras and SWIR cameras and extended SWIR cameras. So there’s a whole range, and they typically cost from 40,000 to 140,000. And which is another reason STELLA is so attractive at $200 a unit.

And so I’m still involved in that, but predominantly retired and started the Science and Technology Society about three years ago now, two and a half years and we’re initially it was to hold technology meetings and socializing with people that were in science for their careers or just interested in science, and then we just got organically interested in STEM education and actually is where we’ve been focusing most of our time these days.

And we, the first course, because of my experience, we chose to use the STELLA Q2 which is 18 channel VNIR spectrometer and you know, since I made spectrometers most of my life, various types and sold them, if I wasn’t making them and teaching people how to use them, it was a natural for me to want to do that.

One of the most important spectroscopy, one of the most important features of Sarasota and Manatee counties in southwest Florida, where we’re based is are the wetlands. And it’s an interface between the ocean and the land and a lot of neat environmental and ecosystem things happen in wetlands. So we thought we would use a spectrometer to see if we could differentiate one type of plant from another. And in so doing, learn about the importance of wetlands.

So there was an ulterior motive. Whenever you have an instrument, you need an application. And so we were sneaking in the interest and the exposure to the application, along with talking about spectroscopy, electromagnetic radiation, how to use a spectrometer, data collection, data processing, all that kind of thing. But at the same time, getting speakers to talk about our environment, the ecological system, the importance of wetlands, the damaging of wetlands that due to hurricanes and also development, hurricanes they seem to survive, you know, development they don’t, which is you know, somehow hurricanes because they’re natural do somehow work themselves out. Maybe later I’ll tell you a story about that. But so, we’re, we’re now focusing very much on STEM education for students and trying to do something exciting and different. And NASA with the family of STELLA Instruments has provided us that opportunity.

00:04:49:03 – 00:05:00:01 Michael P. Taylor: Awesome. Thank you very much. That was a heck of an introduction. So, and you answered actually answered probably like, 3 or 4 of the questions doing it.

00:05:00:02 – 00:05:12:02 Michael P. Taylor: So, short interview. Okay. All right. Exactly. So, Tara, again, thanks for joining us. And what is what’s your background and how did you get involved with this program?

00:05:12:03 – 00:09:02:08 Tara Merino: Sure. Thanks for having me. So, my name is Tara Bergstrom Merino. I officially work for Bank of America in Technology. I started in computer engineering, but I spent most of my career overseeing a suite of applications and change across those applications. About eight years ago, nine years ago, I became heavily involved in STEM with the youth in our community, mostly resulting, you know, as a result of my kids. They were very, especially Michael was very interested in STEM, and there was really not a lot in our community for him to kind of develop that interest.

We by chance kind of came into a program called FIRST, for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. We do not have any sort of presence of that organization in our community. But it was at that time the age group that my kids were in was Lego based. And so they really wanted to kind of pursue a team in there. So, Michael will share, but he, you know, I told him if you wanted to do that, you know, I would help. But, you know, I wanted him to kind of find a team. It could be about ten members. And so he aggressively went and sought out a bunch of students and came with 60 students. So we ended up having six teams because we didn’t want to turn anybody away.

And we did that for quite some time. But when we published that, it caught the interest of Lakewood Ranch proper. And so they’re the number one selling master plan community in the nation. And there’s, you know, a lot of organization that goes behind making sure that it continues to be the number one master plan community. And so they do a lot of activities and events there. So they were like, oh, what is your vision to bring STEM to the community for our youth? I was like, I don’t have a vision. But the whole we really want to bring STEM. There’s like this very significant demand in our community and we think, you know, it’s obviously an up and coming area.

So that ended up I started, you know, kind of like what Dr. Barbi’s doing, but more for youth. I started running meetings and presentations and connecting them with the experts. And I started running math 24 leagues. And we were running all sorts of like we were running the STEM tent at the farmer’s market, and we were doing all sorts of things, when Covid happened, a lot of that went away, just because everything was locked down and we weren’t able to go anywhere. But I remained very engaged in FIRST with Michael and Natalie’s team. We continued that, they continued even running activities over the Lakewood Ranch Facebook page. So like STEM activities, we’d get like every week, we give a STEM challenge out to the students to kind of keep them engaged and connected because that was, you know, an isolating time, I think, for our young folks.

So we did that. But when we came out of Covid, I knew I was going to be moving away from Lakewood Ranch, just because my kids were going to be going to a school that was about 45 minutes south of it. So I didn’t want to re-rigor all of that. When I moved down here though, I got connected with the Suncoast Science Center, the Fab Lab, which is about 15 minutes from my house. And that’s where I met Doctor Barbi. And I was like, oh, well, Doctor Barbi has a vision that was kind of like what Lakewood Ranch wanted to do. And so I said, you know, I’d love to support you in your vision instead of, you know, trying to restart that again. And that’s how we became connected. And then he’s, you know, brought a lot of great programs to the students and fully supportive and COASTWISE is definitely been a staple of that. And I think it’s taught the kids a lot. You know, I don’t think any of those kids even knew what spectrometers were before that. So I think, you know, it’s been an amazing opportunity. The kids have been involved in it for two years now. And I’m just, you know, I’m really just connecting Doctor Barbi with the students, and we have a great relationship doing that.

00:09:24:12 – 00:09:34:04 Michael P. Taylor: Excellent. Yeah. Michael, we’re glad to have you in the student perspective. What grade are you in and what made you want to do coastwise this summer?

00:09:34:05 – 00:09:59:05 Nick Barbi: And don’t say your mother made you do it.

00:09:34:05 – 00:09:59:05 Tara Merino: No.

00:09:34:05 – 00:11:17:06 Michael Melvin Merino: Yeah. So I’m in 12th grade right now, so I’m a senior. And two years ago when it was my mom that brought up the opportunity to do CoastWise, I was actually very intrigued in that. And I shared that with a bunch of other people that I knew. We were all in the same robotics team, so we share that common interest in trying to learn new things. So I originally approached it with like, the, oh, this is just going to be something new to learn, like something I can just add to my skill set. And then going to the meetings when we realized that this was actually something that was very important to the, I want to say the area like the environment, I guess, and helping the wetlands and, you know, understanding how they, their health, how they thrive, how to preserve them. And I got very invested in that. The more that I started going to these meetings. So, yeah, I mean, it’s, I think it was a great opportunity. I think it was definitely a very great chance to learn some new skills and learn a lot about the environment, how it works, how to measure certain things, how to predict the future of those environments, and to help preserve the Everglades for the future.

00:11:17:07 – 00:12:02:14 Nick Barbi: I do want to thank Tara and Michael. Our first group. You know, I contacted Tara, and I said, Tara, I don’t know how to get kids into this. And she said, don’t worry. The robotics team will be there for you. So our first group was almost completely the robotics team. So, I think not only Tara and Michael and Natalie and all the people, but just the spirit, the community spirit they have and the STEM, the love of STEM courses and efforts and experiences and so forth. So it was really critical to us. So I want to thank them for that.

00:12:03:01 – 00:12:11:10 Michael P. Taylor: Before the summer, have you ever heard of, you know, spectroscopy or worked with these particular types of scientific instruments?

00:12:11:11 – 00:12:55:02 Michael Melvin Merino: No. And that was our look at the camera. No. So before before I ever got involved in STELLA, I never heard of any of that terminology before in my entire life. And that’s, I think, part of the reason that me and all my other teammates were so intrigued, was because even though we are so invested in commonly used STEM instruments and, you know, looking at these innovative solutions quite often, that this was a brand new branch that we had never even seen before. So becoming involved in it was, you know, branching into new territory. And I think that’s what originally caught us all and got us engaged into STELLA.

00:12:55:03 – 00:13:02:07 Michael P. Taylor: What made this program appealing for your kids to participate in? So, you know, what excited you about the program?

00:13:02:09 – 00:14:36:12 Tara Merino: Oh, sorry. When the students were younger and they’re part of the Lego branch, that program included an innovation project. So every year they were asked to look at a challenge and find a real world solution for that challenge. And that was always like one of their favorite parts beyond just the robot part, really. The innovation project was one of their favorite parts. But for the league they’re at right now when they’re doing this level of robotics, there is no innovation project. There’s no real world kind of presentation or innovation kind of component. So when Doctor Barbi brought this to the community, it was like, hey, you know what? I have this CoastWise plan. We’re going to be using spectrometry. We’re going to be looking at the Everglades and the wetlands. And we want to understand if we can utilize this tool to actually do something in the real world. I knew that the kids would be interested in that. Right. It’s something that has an impact in the real world, right? That they get to work alongside experts, you know, getting to work alongside you and Dr. Barbi and people that have, you know, real knowledge I think is invaluable to students to get to kind of work alongside real engineers and real scientists, to kind of see their thought process, just learn from them, like how they grow, how they work through problems, I think is invaluable. And then, you know, also the impact of being able to have the potential of doing something that truly has an effect on the wetlands, I think is an incredible experience. Right. Like, who wouldn’t want a student to be part of it?

00:14:36:13 – 00:14:44:04 Michael P. Taylor: Did working with STELLA lead you and the students to discover various NASA data sources and stuff you didn’t know about before? And what did you find?

00:14:44:05 – 00:17:24:05 Tara Merino: Yes. Like, I think, mostly, you know, I’ll have to give credit to Craig Phillips, who really dove in to the NASA applications and pointed out to me and to others who were interested in this, that there’s some phenomenal data sources. We went up and visited a professor at USF, who has access to all the, you know, the direct satellite data and some high resolution satellite data. And Craig pointed out the benefits of space. You know, he, Craig was the type of scientist who, you know, who kept getting ahead of everybody. And instead of keeping pace, he was out at the next level already. Unfortunately, Craig and his wife moved back to Colorado. They’re not much. It’s hard to get them involved. Hopefully we’ll get them involved remotely as time goes on.

So one of the things that we tried to do was show how you could use Google Earth and get the aerial images and look at the changes to the vegetation over time, and pointed out the similarity with Landsat and the PACE which is the ocean satellite, essentially, is extremely interesting to us. The reason we couldn’t use more of the data itself is that it’s pretty complicated, very large to deal with and so forth. So for our first course, which was just four days long, we pointed out the similarity between what NASA’s done with Landsat and what we’re trying to do.

And this year, I think we’re actually going to achieve a drone flying possibly of STELLA itself, but certainly the nature that Bianca Cilento has done where in her case, I believe Mike, she had a spectroscopic drone and then sort of matched up the STELLA 18 channel information with the three channel spectroscopic drone so that they could say, this spectrum from the drone gives us this spectrum from STELLA. So now we can look in more detail and do false color imaging. And I think false color imaging is an interesting concept for young students as well.

00:17:24:08 – 00:18:24:03 Nick Barbi: So this year, we’re fortunate enough, if all goes well, to have a student who, for his science project, designed the control system for drone hardware and software. Have a student that might be able to, you know, help be a not only a student, but be an instructor in some sense. And then if we had our own control system, we have more options to modify it and link the flight of the drone with the collection of the spectrum and so forth. And the goal is to get more involved in and directly relating our work to NASA’s database and you guys. It just needs more than four days to really delve into that.

00:18:24:04 – 00:21:31:02 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah, yeah. So my question was did working with STELLA introduce you and the students to NASA’s broader work in Earth science beyond just rockets? And did it change how students viewed NASA’s work?

00:21:31:03 – 00:22:22:02 Tara Merino: Yeah. I think, you know, when I first brought this to the students that I spoke to, you know, the first year we predominantly did the robotics team, and then the second year we went to some school students as well that I know were engaged in STEM because we had a bit more time. The common answer back was, doesn’t NASA just do like rocket ships? Like what is this? And like, what do they do? And I think, you know, just learning that there’s so much more to what NASA does and that they actually work on instruments and that they’re doing educational things and they engage with the students and they’re doing research. I think was eye opening for the students. Right. But I agree with Dr. Barbi then that like then saying you’re going to get to work with a NASA instrument immediately was exciting to the students are like, oh, we’re going to work with something that NASA made, like, we’re working with something that’s, you know, really, really must be like forward looking.

00:22:22:03 – 00:23:10:12 Nick Barbi: And now they’re engaged like, oh, what else does NASA do, right? That kind of like created a spark to like is there other things that NASA works on and like what other kind of research programs do they do? You know, so I think that was kind of like a lynch pin for them to kind of start looking at that NASA does more than just rocket ships.

00:23:10:13 – 00:24:28:13 Tara Merino: You can get students engaged. I have found that students, especially younger students, have such creative minds. And they think so outside the box that you really want them to be engaged in projects like this, that they can really look at problems in ways that we haven’t been taught yet. Like this is the process you follow to look at a problem. Students just kind of look at it however they want with their mind wide open. So I think engaging students in this and making it accessible to them with kind of a less expensive toolset then can help, maybe guide, you know, your overarching real modeling and things because you really do never know what can come out of a student’s mindset.

I know for us, several years ago, we were looking at space travel and, you know, the challenges that exist in space travel. And our students came up with this whole suit that had like resistant bands to kind of keep muscles engaged so that they wouldn’t lose bone density and all of that. And I think maybe like five years later, that was like a real product. Like now people actually use that for physical therapy and things. So but it’s just you know, it was incredible that ten year olds came up with that concept, like right off the bat within a couple hours or like, oh, this is, you know, these are the challenges and like, this is what we could do. So I think, you know, having youth and students engaged in real world challenges like this, they can look at it in a different way. And they might come up with ideas that, you know, some of us that have been doing this for many years wouldn’t come up with.

00:24:44:09 – 00:26:14:12 Nick Barbi: I was going to say something, Mike, if I’m still allowed a minute. Now, we don’t want to hear from you. Yeah. So. No, your comment was about linking it to the NASA data inspired me a little bit because we are talking about doing a freshman in college level course that would actually be, you know, a semester, trimester, whatever works out to be. And in that course, that’s where we could really spend a lot more time on that kind of association. It makes it a much higher level course. And be it, you know, we got the time to do it. So I think that that’s a perfect sort of vertical addition. You know, we want to do things laterally in this course across the different instrumentation that you’re doing or different applications of the same instrument, but also vertically above the, you know, the science behind it and the use of the data further beyond it. So hopefully that’s something we’re working on now and may come to fruition in a year or two, not sure. But thank you.

00:26:14:13 – 00:27:27:03 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah, so Michael, can you talk about the experience of assembling the STELLA and what challenges you ran into?

00:27:27:04 – 00:30:12:09 Nick Barbi: So we, initially we ordered the parts to do a build class, meaning we bring in, you know, 15 kids and 15 instruments, and we go through building it all at once. But when you do that, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got to be somewhat of a control freak, right? Because everybody’s got to be on the same page, doing the same thing at the same time, and the parts have to be laid out. And in this case, it was me and one other instructor, and we just didn’t get the job done. Kind of a classic mistake and not fully doing the build prior to the teaching exercise. So you know it has the trappings of looking very easy and yet there’s some experience level things that you need to gain. The other thing that caused us a problem was just ordering parts and finding out that they weren’t available and the notice that we had given ourselves. And because of that, we had to modify a part. We essentially had to build a part that came as an integrated unit into from two pieces. And that piece ended up not being of the proper dimension for the slot and the housing. So that caused the case not to close properly. And we didn’t realize it until we spent hours on it. And so it was not, I think the conclusion was it would be nice to have a little more room in there for those wires and also some suggestions about the placement of the buttons and that kind of thing. But by and large, the problem that we experienced while building was mostly of our own doing. And now we have, you know, we have a couple of. I will show you right here. I just got delivered new Q2 units. But, yeah. So, you know, we even though we understand it was needed to be, you know, the design goal was to be small. We didn’t think it had to be quite as small as it was and that we could have used a little more leeway with the wires.

00:31:48:12 – 00:33:29:12 Nick Barbi: Although the problem was not itself the wires. The problem was in the oversized component that we had a rig up from because the part wasn’t available directly. So on time later, they all came in, but they didn’t come in on time. We then had the students do failure analysis and the whole thing. And a couple of students, including Tara’s daughter, Natalie, and Colton, who was the exceptional young man, the two of them together, really led the failure analysis and came up with some great suggestions, some of which were solving a problem that didn’t exist, as I said. But nevertheless, we didn’t know that at the time. But the exercise of going through that and then listening to Paul explain why things were done a certain way, why he didn’t think, you know, recommendations were necessary in some cases, but also why he thought they were very good recommendations in other cases. That was a great moment for us.

00:33:29:13 – 00:33:41:03 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah. In fact, he sent you all a failure analysis report. Yes. He did. Right. And so it was there for that.

00:33:41:04 – 00:35:47:03 Tara Merino: And I do recall him, like, you know, stopping the students and really having them explain what they meant and why and all that, that it was, yeah. Not only the students, but the instructors as well. And I think that’s also a very good experience for students, right? To be questioned and have to kind of give their logic and reasoning for what they thought or what they presented and areas of improvement that they see. And then how do you defend why they think a certain thing, or why they felt a certain way about something. So I think, you know, that can be hard for a student and even as an adult. So I think, you know, that no matter what those sort of opportunities are really educational and valuable to students. And then I think, you know, as engineers and as mentors to hear from students is also allowing us to help them better their skill set. So I think the students learned a lot. I hope, you know, I think Paul also hopefully took some takeaways from it. You know, I don’t think, you know, I know there were some things that were necessarily actually wrong or complicated with it or a challenge. And it was something else, like the chip we bought or something. But I think, you know, hopefully there was some other value in what they presented. But I think any time you’re having a student engage with a real professional and you’re connecting them, I think there’s a lot of growth. I think being able to struggle, and I agree with Doctor Barbi, sometimes the challenges or the problems or the struggles are much bigger learning opportunities than successes. So I think, you know, for them, you know, CoastWise and STELLA provides them an opportunity to utilize a tool in a way that gives them information and experiences they wouldn’t have.

00:36:11:10 – 00:36:51:07 Tara Merino: I think then being able to work alongside real scientists and folks that built the instrument, or people that use the instrument, and hearing how they use it, connects them to real world experiences and gives them an understanding of like how they could use, you know, what their careers could be like someday, and if that would be interesting to them. And I think overall, it gives them a breadth of exposure to things that they may never have known to consider in their careers. I feel like a lot of times students are like, okay, I want to be a lawyer or I want to be a doctor, or I want to be an engineer, because those are things that they see all the time in movies or they hear about.

00:36:51:08 – 00:39:29:07 Michael P. Taylor: What surprised you about the connections between this local project and NASA’s broader Earth science work?

00:39:29:08 – 00:42:30:14 Nick Barbi: I think that, you know, it elevated the importance of what we’re doing to say that NASA on a much larger scale is doing this, doing it at a much more scientific level, a worldwide level. And zillions of applications of it, depending upon which area of the world people are interested in. And so it gave it a substantially stronger rationale and credibility in terms of what we’re trying to do. I think one of the really interesting things was the NDVI, the normalized difference vegetative index. And this is a way to compare the vegetation from year to year or month to month or season to season. And the concept that this is done on NASA satellites, that this is common practice, I think is extremely interesting. And the fact that the waterkeeper is very interested in the changes of sea grass density, especially in the aftermath of all the, you know, the red tide and all the other things that have polluted the, the sea grass area. And so we can do a relatively small version, mini version of the same kind of thing. So yeah, I think all of this lent credibility from what we’re doing on a small scale to what the waterkeeper’s doing on a much larger regional scale and what NASA’s doing on a worldwide scale.

00:42:30:15 – 00:44:08:04 Michael P. Taylor: For Michael, could you walk us through what it was like collecting data from plants, from actual plants? And could you tell different plants apart from their light signatures? Did anything surprise you? And what were your takeaways from that?

00:44:08:05 – 00:46:29:03 Michael Melvin Merino: The data collection portion was actually very simple and very straightforward. We set up multiple plants outside, and we did a series of measurements on each plant. So it wasn’t just one measurement per plant. It was a couple. And then we imported that data into, I think it might have been Excel. And then we, you know, graphed it, organized it, looked at it, looked through trends. It definitely gave me a lot more insight into how data collection is actually done. Before then, I had really only collected data like with like single variable like experiments, not with something that had this many components to it that we had to account for, like the sunlight, which is one that I didn’t remember until you mentioned it. Like the position of the sunlight changes obviously over time. And like that, that’s not something that I’m used to accounting for. Like working with that many variables was definitely something that was new to me. And although it didn’t, like STELLA itself didn’t change the direction of mechanical engineering that I wanted to go into, it definitely gave me a lot more insight into like how the collection of data might actually happen in my field, rather than just like, you know, oh, we’re going to run this tiny little experiment. It might be like, okay, we’re going to run this experiment. Here’s all the variables we have to take into consideration. And I think using, you know, having gone through the STELLA program, although it was short, gave me a little more insight into how that process and data collection, collection and analysis might actually work.

00:46:29:04 – 00:48:53:00 Tara Merino: Yeah. I mean, I think that COASTWISE allowed them to connect with technology and terminology that they never would have had. Right, terms they never would have had. They got to program in a way that’s very different. Right? So, right now they only program for hardware, so they only do hardware programming. They don’t do any programming over a data set to like kind of analyze data that was something that they had never done before. A lot of them had never looked at a data set that needed to be normalized before. I think understanding kind of how they would have to present information and how they could utilize information and also like how data can be manipulated to kind of not maybe necessarily always give the truth was also something that was unique to them through CoastWise. So I think those were all very unique skills that they didn’t have exposure to before and without going through the CoastWise program with STELLA, they wouldn’t have had access to. Just to show, again, I wanted to mention the Fab Lab that was so generous and crucial to our pulling the first couple of years off. And then here is Natalie, Michael’s sister, and there’s Michael.

00:48:53:01 – 00:55:32:02 Nick Barbi: So I wanted to show some results of our spectra from the black mangrove, the red mangrove and the white mangrove. Now, these were all obviously saplings, but we knew exactly what they were, and we could get, you know, color wise, they’re all very similar. Here we can see the spectra that we were getting from these. And here’s the wavelength axis from 400 to 1000 nanometers, reflectance. And then these were the areas of some differentiation that I pointed out on the spectra that clearly allowed us to differentiate, you know, one spectrum from another. And there are plenty of regions that give us differentiation. And then here’s the color bar where the black is infrared and the rest is as shown here. So I think this seemed to be consistent. Consistency is always an issue. But I think it’s very interesting that the green color was very common.

And these were done one, two, three. So that was not a lot of there was no time difference. The sun was at the same angle. Essentially throughout the whole thing we used the white card and so there’s clearly differences between this, especially when you look at the infrared here, but also just in the colors. I mean, the spectrometer pointed out some very different levels of color amounts of blue and green and orange and so forth that it was hard to see by the eye. And then here we have seven plants that we looked at. And I’m going to jump to just looking at the five green plants. I took out, if you see here, I threw in a couple of ringers because I knew they were going to be quite different in the visible light spectrum because their color is different. And so these were the five green plants, and then these were the two that I threw in to make sure we got some differences.

And so the, if you go to the five plants, you can see that there’s, these are all normalized at an orange color. And so all these plants, all these spectra were made to be equal at 580 nanometers. And then you can see there’s ratio differences that can be, if consistent, can be used to distinguish one plant from another. Now, here’s a situation between two groups where we looked at the group called Viper and the group called Crocs. And we saw the green box here, which is below. And these spectra between the two groups were very similar. Remarkably so. Maybe, this one, they’re all three very, very good. So this is the bougainvillea, the jasmine and the Persian shield and so two different groups, two different spectrometers being used. And then the blue box up here was pretty good, pretty good match from one group to another. And then finally the Heliconia was really not so good of a match where we would have to do a lot more data collection. So, but of the group we looked at, we had some pretty good consistency. And this will end up being the true test as to how consistent we’ll be able to get. So is the deviation from time to time, group to group, in the system greater than the inherent deviation of the spectrum? If it is, then we’re in trouble. If not, then we’re in good shape. So this is part of the research aspect of what we’re trying to do.

00:55:32:03 – 00:56:29:10 Tara Merino: Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re going to expand it to more areas, there needs to be sort of like a curriculum guide. And I don’t know if that exists, but something that allows someone maybe that doesn’t have a Doctor Barbi, that’s utilized this sort of technology before that’s going to be able to explain it. Right. So if you’re going to want somebody else like a me to be able to run a course like this or like a fab lab to be able to run and utilize STELLA, there needs to be some sort of instruction set that says like, okay, you know, day one, this is what you want to do. Day two, this is what you want to do. Day three and maybe there’s multiple variations of that. And depending on the duration that you’re going to work with the technology with, so that would be like what I would suggest if we want to expand. Right. There just needs to be some sort of high level explanation and instruction so that you can make it accessible to people that don’t have a Dr. Barbi that has experience with instruments like this.

00:56:29:11 – 01:04:16:02 Michael P. Taylor: What do you want to tell parents or educators about programs like this?

01:04:16:03 – 01:10:35:05 Nick Barbi: And the way to do that is to make sure there are opportunities. And so we want to build the technical community, the technical strength of the community, make it a place where technical families and their companies can feel comfortable locating. Start ups can locate. One of the best things we can do in my position is to have opportunities for their kids and opportunities that can be modeled nationwide and worldwide. So if we can say that a program that is now worldwide began in Sarasota and Manatee counties in Florida, that would make people aware of the things that we’re doing. So that’s what it does for the area. It would do that, you know, we can’t, we’re not going to change much of the political spectrum or the funding spectrum or we’re not going to do much of that. But if we can make it a known place for starting really advanced STEM education programs for kids that get national and international recognition. To me, that is a phenomenal contribution.

01:05:47:15 – 01:05:53:15 Michael P. Taylor: Finally, any closing thoughts about where do you want to take this program and why people should support it?

01:05:54:03 – 01:08:46:15 Nick Barbi: You know, one of the things we’re doing next month is we’re having some kids that, you know, one of the, besides CoastWise, a very big program we do is send kids to Italy for three weeks at an AI session at, you know, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, which is in Trento, Italy. And they pay 100% of the fees once kids get to Italy. So what we do and what the parents do now is the parents have to have the money to send a kid. The airfare. And so we would like to open this up more for other kids that may not be able to buy the airfare, whose family may not be able to send them over, even though it doesn’t cost them anything when they get over there. Airfare is not cheap. So we are trying to say that we give a technical experience that kids can’t get anywhere else. It helps the career opportunities decision by opening up, you know, if kids have a bent toward science but never heard of instruments, never heard of spectroscopy, don’t know anything about data analysis. At grades, you know, at say rising freshman level where they’re just going from eighth grade to freshman. This is the time really to hit those kids with look at these opportunities.

So it will help the standard of living, as I say, draw more people into the community that have, that are tech aware people and are worried about their kids education. And then we have this international tie which is an experience that opens up all new kinds of opportunities for kids. They meet friends from not only Italy, but from, you know, there’s many countries represented in this program. So next year we’re going to be able to send 6 or 7 kids to this program. We’ve been upgraded because of the level of kids that we’ve been able to send. But we want to expand that international collaboration. And we want Italian kids to come here, and we want more of our kids to go to Italy and all of this, you know, builds the community, builds opportunities for kids, brings in families that are concerned about that. And so we can make kids aware of the environmental issues of the affected development.

01:08:46:16 – 01:10:35:05 Nick Barbi: So they can make their own decisions. And this is our CoastWise program about whether development is a good thing or whether it’s nonsense. They can look at images, they can compare images before and after. They can see mangroves decreasing in volume or changing in normalized difference vegetative index. And then we could expand this to water quality, agricultural analysis, sustainable farming, air quality to a lesser extent. We’re fortunate enough not to have severe air quality issues here because of the ocean and the breezes and all that kind of thing. So, but the things that care about the community, it teaches the kids not only science, but more about the environment in which they live and how what the real difference between an organically grown product and an organic soil versus non organic and help them understand the choices that they make throughout life. So, you know, the the launches are done and so forth can be, Jacksonville is pretty industrial area, but, you know, we’re noted for our beauty. And so environment becomes a big issue. But we want to also have tech companies, new companies, start ups or relocations of companies here. And we have to show them that there’s some amazing informal STEM education programs and maybe other education programs, not so necessarily STEM oriented, entrepreneurial things, which we’re looking into, an entrepreneurial fair, for example. And so this is to make the area a more prime location for the tech families and tech companies to locate.

01:10:35:06 – 01:12:15:00 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah. Thank you so much. You’ve been great. I’m really pleased and happy you guys were able to join us today. Thank you. Well, again you know any time we’re going to get to interact with, you know, real experts and hear feedback I’m going to sign my kids up for that. Yeah. Even after surgery. Yeah I didn’t get up there. Well, they’ll see it. And that was that was an emergency like we did. I didn’t know that that was going to happen until Monday, so I didn’t actually sign him up like knowing that that was going to be the case.

01:12:15:00 – 01:13:19:01 Tara Merino: Thank you so much, Mike, for all that you do and engaging with students in your time. I mean, it really has been an amazing opportunity. I look forward to seeing what comes out of it this summer. But, I know, you know, not just Michael, but all the students, they really, really enjoyed the summer. They really enjoyed being able to speak to you and to Paul. I know that as Doctor Barbi said, he didn’t really just say that. Like it really was the highlight. They all talked about it for weeks about how they got to talk to NASA. They thought it was the coolest thing. So, you know, I definitely, you know, I appreciate you guys taking the time, making it a memorable experience for them. You know, listening to them and taking their feedback, making them feel part of, you know, a process, making them feel part of a solution and part of, you know, impacting something that’s beyond themselves. I think that was a really inspiring moment for them. So, so thank you for that. And Dr. Barbi, you know, always, you know, thank you for making all the opportunities for our students and the community. You know, it’s awesome to work with you.

Nick Barbi: Yeah. Well thank you. And, great. Back at you, Tara. Thank you very much.

Related Resources:

The post Building Tomorrow’s Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time appeared first on STELLA.

Students Build AI-Powered Drone for Earth Observation | NASA SEES Internship Journey

Michael Taylor — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 04:32:29 +0000

Students Build AI-Powered Drone for Earth Observation | NASA SEES Internship

Video Summary

In this interview, four high school students from the 2025 NASA SEES (STEM Enhancement in Earth Science) internship program discuss EarthLens, an innovative drone-based system they developed to complement satellite Earth observations with high-resolution ground data. Samuel Bawden, Nandini Khaneja, Neev Tamboli, and Jordan Rodriguez share their journey from classroom learners to hands-on innovators, demonstrating the power of experiential STEM education in workforce development.

Project Origins and Technical Design

EarthLens emerged from the students’ experience using GLOBE Observer to compare ground-truth land cover data with satellite datasets from Landsat and Sentinel. Recognizing the challenges of manual data collection and the vast difference in spatial scales between ground and satellite observations, the team designed a drone platform that bridges this gap. Their system integrates STELLA-Q2 and Helio-STELLA spectrometers for measuring surface and atmospheric properties, RGB cameras, a Raspberry Pi-based data system, and a preliminary AI classification tool for real-time land cover analysis. The goal is to make Earth science data collection more accessible for citizen scientists, educators, researchers, and agricultural applications.

Learning Through Hands-On Experience

The students candidly discuss their learning journey, emphasizing that none of them began with significant remote sensing or drone-building experience. Through hands-on problem-solving, mentorship from University of Toledo graduate students, and self-directed learning, they assembled the drone from accessible components, integrated unfamiliar technologies like Raspberry Pi systems and flight controllers, and developed software solutions. Their discussion of comparing satellite and ground observations provides authentic insight into how students build conceptual understanding of remote sensing principles through real-world experience. The team emphasizes that their work complements satellite missions, filling an important niche in spatial resolution and data validation.

Future Directions and Impact

Looking forward, the students plan to create build guides for others to replicate their system, integrate additional environmental sensors, and refine both hardware and software components. They envision applications in agricultural monitoring, environmental research, and education, where the system could provide detailed observations at scales between satellites and ground measurements. Each team member reflects on how the project influenced their career goals in engineering and Earth science, demonstrating that high school students can develop meaningful tools for real-world environmental challenges. Presented at the American Geophysical Union conference, EarthLens exemplifies how project-based learning and mentorship cultivate the next generation of Earth science professionals while students continue building their foundational knowledge in remote sensing and related fields.

Transcript

Introduction & Team Members

I’m here with the, NASA SEES group that I met at AGU. Working on the EarthLens project.

And I’ll save that for you to tell us all about what EarthLens, is and what you did and all that.

But, with, that being said, I’m going to ask you to, introduce yourself.

Where you’re from again, just the city is fine. And your role in the EarthLens project.

Okay. And I’m just going to go in order from how I see it in my screen over here, from right to left.

Okay. And so first up, I have Sam. Yeah. Hi.

I’m Sam Bodman from Washington, DC area.

I’m, going to Dartmouth next year. I’m going to be a freshman there. And my main responsibilities

with the Within the EarthLens team was, essentially doing,

a lot of the background research for essentially identifying the problem we were seeking to solve, which was improving,

citizen science tools for land cover. So we were interns, in a program this past summer,

which I’m sure we’ll talk about. And a lot of the tools we used were challenging and give great data.

And so kind of assessing what those challenges were and then how to solve them with EarthLens was kind of

where I came in then next up I have Neeve. Yeah. So I’m Neeve, from the Bay Area in California,

about like 20 minutes out of San Francisco. And, my main role within the EarthLens project was

sort of, helping design and plan out the drone as well as designing

how our entire system would kind of be integrated with the computational part. next up, I have Nandini.

Hi, I’m Nandini, I’m from Long Island, New York. My role on the EarthLens team was, was, hardware lead.

So I did the physical construction of the drone and the STELLA integration. And we’ll be continuing to work on various iterations of the drone.

And last but not least, Jordan. Hi. My name is Jordan Rodriguez, and I’m from Westlake, Texas.

And, on the EarthLens project, I focused on software and data architecture. My role involves designing how observation data,

is captured, from the drone and transmitted to the actual app.

NASA SEES Program & Project Origins

first off, I want to understand what NASA SEES is and how, you know, folks from all across the country,

you got to get together and work on the project. So can you tell me just a little bit more about NASA’s SEES

and, and how that happened? Sure. I love to take that question. So NASA SEES

is, really was a gift of a program. I think for a lot of us, they do,

all kinds of programing for high school, students interested in engineering and earth and space sciences

and physics and, so students from all over the country, every corner.

You know, this group is representative of that, but not in the least, limited to how many places people came from,

including, you know, territories like Puerto Rico and things like that. People from all over the country,

got together and worked on a lot of really cool projects. Or specifically was about,

essentially assessing the agreement between ground truth land cover data and satellite derived land cover data.

But there were groups who worked on designing future missions to moons of Jupiter

and Saturn or other really, you know, just crazy cool things like that. And so I think it was a really awesome way to get introduced,

to, you know, kind of what careers in Stem look like. And I think I speak for everybody when I say

it really encouraged us to pursue this kind of work in the future.

What is Earth Lens?

Awesome. Awesome. That’s fantastic. And, so we’ve touched on a bit of what EarthLens is, but,

could I bother, one of you to, tell me exactly what EarthLens is? What did you do for the project?

You know, sort of just, the in broad, definition, a broad scope of what the project is.

Yeah, I could take this one. So, I think from a very basic quick perspective, EarthLens,

we came across the idea once we realized how, a lot of times, inaccurate

and inefficient data collection of land cover was with the existing technology

because it relied mostly on, like, manual or just simply very far off inaccurate satellite satellite data.

And we wanted to change this by making it a more accurate and be more reliable, because one of our friends, Jordan, over here, I think he lost

over 200 images that he took over like ten plus hours. And we also had the data that a lot of the pictures

that we had taken, as part of our internship, they were I believe, less than one megapixel in resolution.

So we wanted to see how we could improve that. And we came up with the idea that a drone could address

both of these problems, because a, a drone is kind of like a happy medium between the very inaccurate high up satellites

and the having to go on your feet with your phone manual like, NASA GLOBE.

And with our computational parts, we can also make sure that the data can be stored very safely, and we’re not going to be losing it.

Okay. And so you said inaccurate, satellites. What do you mean by that?

So I think very briefly, one of as Sam mentioned, our internships goals

was to see the difference between, the land cover

that we can see on the ground and what satellites are, showing them to be on the main NASA data sets.

And I think we can probably pull this up later sometime, but we had these large charts that we made that compared these different, strips of data.

And we were able to see that the, the data that the satellite gave about the land,

specifically stuff like spectral resolutions and what was exactly being covered by that land was often inaccurate.

And it would be inaccurate in the way that, let’s say, it would classify something that’s grass as trees that were nearby wouldn’t be accurate

enough to see that, hey, this is a patch of grass over here in the midst of a forest.

Sometimes even, like, you know, shadows that would be picked up, it just wouldn’t give any information.

Or maybe it might even say was like water because of the darkness. It compared with other, water bodies to those, shadows.

Yeah.

Coming Together

tell me how this whole process, sort of came together and how you all started working and collaborating together.

Sure. So the NASA SEES internship program as a whole is open to high school juniors and seniors from across the country.

So we had had the ability to select teams we were interested in, and we ended up getting sorted into those as we got accepted into the program.

So we were part of a 50 person team called Earth System Explorers that met virtually over two months. June to July 2025.

We had a variety of mentors, including rusty, Peter and all the scientists who, you know, and since our main goal was to compare land cover data that we recorded

using the GLOBE, the GLOBE Observer application in our own community, and comparing that to data existing in ArcGIS

and manual, data that we’ve classified in Collect Earth Online.

We, a lot of groups were deciding what to do with that data that we had generated throughout the internship,

since we had like 37 different points within a three kilometer grid in our own communities. So a lot of people wanted to analyze the data that they had generated.

But we took a closer look at our, data quality itself. And then once we saw what a big issue that data quality was and how Jordan lost

such a significant number of the photos that he had taken, we realized that GLOBE Observer had been a very valuable, tool for the time that we were using it.

But it had, you know, there were challenges that were beginning to surface, especially since it hadn’t been

updated as frequently. And we thought we wanted to combine the benefit of the bird’s eye view that a satellite gives with the increased granularity

you would get just going by, manually taking the photos. So we wanted to, take a more unconventional hardware

based approach to doing this. And it was definitely a challenge because we’re all across the country.

So, it was a group decision to go all in on this one leading up to AGU.

Combining Hardware & Citizen Science

what interested you all about combining drones, remote sensing and citizen science all together into one package?

the technologies that have become accessible to, you know, the average person have, improved greatly.

I think, you know, these STELLA sensors and the ability to build a drone in your garage and access to AI tools is something that’s new.

And so why not take a new approach to, land observation, Earth observation.

Yeah, that hits the nail on the head. So for me, I just, we remember how initially we,

I think when we were working with our working group to see what we could take the project further with.

We definitely wanted to keep citizen science in mind, because that was kind of the core value that was ingrained with NASA GLOBE

and, you know, working after the NASA SEES project where we were so deeply engrained with land cover

and wanting to revolutionize that sort of sector, we decided that we had like a few different options.

And I remember Jordan had this great computational idea. And Nandini brought to, a hardware based idea where we had,

like, instruments like STELLA and then we looked at each other and we were like, wait a minute. We can kind of combine both of these to make like an intelligent hardware

based system that uses this type of instrumentation to solve the problems that we need to.

Building the Drone – Hardware Development

what was your experience with, like, say, drone technology, remote sensing and or the, STELLA instruments themselves?

Sure. I’d like to talk about that from from, like, a hardware perspective. I had never built a, never built a drone before.

I actually, my, mechanical engineering related experience, even before the internship program, I had done a research project,

working on a martian simulation chamber in my basement with a friend of mine. And that, you know, made me very familiar with that low cost optimizing,

being responsible for basically every type of engineering in one project kind of experience.

So from there, I, we were able to, I researched how, I guess these kinds of drones have been built in the past.

I visited my local hobby store to learn how to mount the motors. Right. And, you know, try to use online resources and my own community

to try to make this hardware as accurate as possible. And for example, we were we ourselves were not familiar with STELLA tools beforehand.

And I personally also had never used a spectrometer board. Actually, we started using STELLA because it gave us a place to start

exploring this. The first step, the very first step we took hardware wise, was ordering every part

that is required for the Helio-STELLA and the STELLA-Q2 designs. Attaching the circuitry, making sure it worked

on the SparkFun boards that it’s designed for. And then once I realized we needed to integrate that

into a Raspberry Pi system to record that microSD card and be part of the transferring to Jordan’s app system,

we were able to slowly strip away components like the real time clock didn’t need to be needed anymore.

The, of course it’s slipping my mind right now, but there’s displays, there’s much, many components we were able to eliminate

to make it to a more barebones style model that hopefully any, lab worker or hobbyist could build in their basement for a,

reasonable sum of money. Yeah, I think the cool part of it is none of us came in

with any significant experience directly related to this. And I think in, in a, in a cool way,

that’s an advantage on the citizen science end of things. Because if we can make something that is intuitive,

then it can be widely used. Yeah. And just focusing on like even though we were so inexperienced

with hardware like this, I think one of the beauties of science and in specific here with STELLA was that there’s like this community

around people that know what they’re doing. And for example, we were able to reach out to grad students all the way out in Ohio, and they were able to help us

because they were like STELLA experts, and we were able to use their help. And that kind of brought us forward to a stage where we wouldn’t

have been able to without them. Oh yeah. And of course, of course. It all ties back to you know, the, the SEES program giving us

this opportunity to explore what we probably wouldn’t have otherwise known,

if it wasn’t actually for the SEES program.

Graduate Student Mentorship & Support

Rusty connected us, with two graduate students at the University of Toledo, who go by Femi and Feisal,

who, they work under a professor that she knew very closely. And they were both very helpful in two different ways.

So for example, Faisal was able to help verify, our technical planning,

while Femi was very helpful in making sure that we knew the, just generally how to plan a project like this, because it’s

such a big undertaking and especially considering we’re for high schoolers, trying to figure it out because, I mean, in a way,

we are the citizen scientists trying to put together this kind of a system. So I think having so much support on that side from,

not just the scientists that we directly worked with in the SEES program, but scientists, we were able to be connected to, during the design process and even after.

Technical Challenges – Raspberry Pi & Flight Systems

were there any other, like, major components of the EarthLens systems that you developed, that you didn’t previously mentioned?

I think, you know, the we did a lot of work,

specifically with how to fly the drone. With Nandini, you can talk more about it, but essentially,

you know, you want it to be, clean user interface, and you don’t want it to be, you know, clunky controls

where you have to type an input for the for the drone drone to go up or down. And so there was a lot of tinkering we had to do on that.

And Nandini you want to talk about that, that’s cool. And it one that feeds right into the next question, which would be like and I figured to go right into there,

what was the sort of, most challenging technical problem you had to solve? And how did you approach it?

So I got to say, it’s like, I think it’s the combination of all the little problems that came in along the way.

Like, for example, we’re using this Raspberry Pi based system. We haven’t used Raspberry Pi’s in the past, past all my experiences

with Arduinos. So I think understanding the Raspberry Pi itself was going to be like a mini computer and required its own monitor

and keyboard, and that kind of stuff was not something I expected. So we ended up working around that so I could run it from

my own computer connected to a hotspot on my phone. So that it can be done literally anywhere, because this was because

we had to do early stages before it gets fully connected to just an app. So like that’s one of the challenges that came in the way our flight controller,

for example, they come in with preloaded software sometimes. And, you know, these things are usually designed

for like the first person view racing drones. And it was definitely hard to see how big of a how big a propeller,

what kind of flight navigation hardware, what kind of, GPS system is required for an actual observation drone.

So we had to take risks like deleting the software already on that, on that flight controller,

like $140 flight controller, and hoping that I downloaded the, the GPS navigation appropriate software.

INAV correctly instead. So I think it was just the combination of, you know, we can very clearly plan

this out and go, okay, step A, step B you know, these are going to be all the steps that we’re going to take.

But there are so many little not necessarily detours but little bumps in the way that I guess

you become more familiar with once you or a small group is responsible for the entirety of a project like that at this scale.

So I think that was definitely the biggest thing to get used to.

Dual Spectrometer System

So yeah. And you were integrating the STELLA-Q2 and the Helio-STELLA spectrometers into your platform.

And you also hinted of this, but, what did you learn from that process and why did you do it?

So the reason I think we chose those two in particular was that we we noticed that the GLOBE Observer app was not just land cover.

It also had a cloud cover function too, even though we ourselves had used it. So by we already planned to have a camera facing down and a camera facing up,

which that’s kind of being worked on still, with the multiplexer,

but so we wanted something that was going to measure the upward and downward, both because you wanted to have something, you know, comparing it to.

So it’s not just one data source. So like for example, like I have the actual thing here too.

We designed it using the same cables in the STELLA system. I don’t know if the blur will let you see it. So that we have the triad spectrometer used in the Q2 going down

and giving us more channels and more and more information or data like we would need for that land cover observation.

While we would have, I believe, 8 or 9 channels something, something a smaller number of channels

in the Helio-STELLA one and those two combined. Well, because we were able to do that,

like the daisy chaining of storage with the quick cables. So I through the STELLA system, I learned how to even do that,

because if I just looked at the spectrometer board alone before that, I would be asking myself, where’s the ground?

You know, where’s the ground? Where’s the power? Just working and very like, simple. Like the normal DuPont wire setup.

So I think, especially that STELLA the the guides for STELA online

help me see how intuitive the connection, especially between these two specific ones, would be and how valuable they’d be for implementation.

Yeah, and it’s not just how intuitive the actual hardware is, but also just the data that it spits out.

So like for our initial tests, like using the spectrometers and photos,

we were literally able to create charts of our of our first data collections by just copy and pasting values

from the output into a Google spreadsheet, Google, Google Sheets spreadsheet. So it’s not so, so STELLA.

The STELLA devices, you know, they served our purpose really well of wanting to get, you know, all of the data about light and air

and not just the ground and not just the sky, but how the lighting, essentially mixes with the irradiance between those,

two sources, interact with each other. But also just how easy it is to get the data from the STELLA hardware

to, a format where we can interpret it.

Uncertainty, Data Processing & AI Classification

so you used basically the Helio-STELLA to help normalize the data you were getting from the surface reflectance and all that.

Okay. So sort of instantaneous reflectance. So you just bypassed, the whole irradiance problem itself.

I’m sure you have quite a bit of uncertainty with those, because those are not the most sophisticated sensors ever.

Are you taking a look into those, into the uncertainties as well? So, yeah, there there was a certain amount

of normalization we had to do, for example, the, the, the, the wavelengths that each, of light

that each of the two spectrometers collect are not exactly the same.

They’re only off by a little bit, which means in a graph, you know, we can we can, pretty accurately compare them.

But there is that small contingency you have to deal with. And then, you know, like you said, it’s we’re not working with,

you know, massive, you know, super accurate spectrometers. So it really is the other thing that we’re working on with

the drone is how we can collect the maximum amount of metadata, how high we are, how fast or moving

temperature, time date and all of those things

combined to kind of account for anything that might not make sense. And so you get a much better picture by using the other aspect,

the other pieces of data that the drone itself collects to get a better picture of what the STELLA spectrometers are seeing as well.

Yeah. And one of our like, further works that we’ve planned out as well is kind of integrating an AI model into our Sis system.

And what this could do is make use of all of that metadata, as well as the raw spectral data

that we have to kind of eliminate as much as possible those uncertainties.

The Software Application – Real-Time Insights

can you tell me what was involved in developing the AI classification system?

Yeah. So I can go ahead and, take a lead on that. So when it comes to the AI classification,

we’re kind of talking more about the software side, right? So, we’re going through the route of making the app.

So EarthLens, is going to be an app, that works with the sensors and cameras to look at land in real time.

Basically, it’ll take the information like the vegetation, soil and water, and then it will use AI to give you, like, the insights right away.

So, when we were using the GLOBE Observer, we had to, use like these little scales and we had to kind of like guesstimate.

What percentage of the photo was, let’s say water tree or shadow or grass and whatnot.

So instead of waiting to process all that data later, you can see it right when happens.

Right. So, I really wanted it to be easy to use, so you don’t have to, like, be a scientist or an engineer to understand what’s going on.

Of course, that’s kind of the main point of citizen science. Yeah. So it’s meant to work in different places, too, whenever it’s,

farmland or wetlands or even urban areas so that the app can adapt, to different environments.

The coolest part is seeing the data, like, actually turn into something useful, right? So I’ve learned a lot about how the softwares and the sensors

and the AI can work together. Of course, it’s still in the development. Preliminary stages, right. Because it’s not super easy to do that.

But, also figuring out, what’s realistic for a tool like this and what it can actually do.

And what’s better to simplify it, right. So it’s been a fun challenge to make something that’s powerful, but, also very useful for citizen science.

Yeah. And, you know, developing an AI tool is, you know, it’s more doable than ever,

but it really is, kind of a space that AI hasn’t,

fully impacted, I think, in the way that it could. And so, you know, all all of the challenges that come along

with training a model, validating data to train it on, is is, you know, one of the probably one of the biggest challenges,

one that having to face, throughout the course of this project. But we think it’s very much worth it for the end goal.

So that’s one of the things that we’re excited to work on in the future. Yeah. And while we’re on the topic of both challenges and AI, I think

which is really important to note that one of our main goals was to also keep the whole thing really affordable.

And that means making sure that all the computational power that it would take is kept to as little as possible.

So we have to sort of balance how heavy of an AI model we can use without having to make sure that,

oh, there has to be like a big fat computer onboard the drone or something.

NASA Mission Data Comparisons

what particular say NASA missions would you be comparing the data to? If you’re or are you comparing the data to, if any?

I believe right now, in our adopt a pixel, in the adopt a pixel methodology

like chart that we’ve been using so far in this internship. I think we compare Landsat and Sentinel data

specifically to, what we’ve observed in GLOBE. And I remember in our poster, we proposed adding an additional column

with the, with the photos from down, another one for the up photo, and then like a bunch for those graphs individually.

So it could be seen as like an expansion to the currently existing, like comparisons that are being done to Landsat and Sentinel data.

So, so far I was going to say I completely agree that we we had a few conversations

with people at the AGU conference that brought up, similar topics about,

kind of thinking about how EarthLens itself could expand to slightly more than just land cover, observations.

And I think that integrates nicely, comparing a lot of different,

sources of satellite data. And also it sounds like STELLA has a few,

a few more really cool tools that we could work with.

Division of Labor & Team Roles

can you tell me directly, how did you divide responsibilities among your team members, and what was your specific contribution?

So you can go, one at a time, if you don’t mind. And, Sam, sincerity like on screen. Or at least you’re in my widest view here.

I can go ahead and start with yourself, if you don’t mind. Yeah. So, before CES, before this project,

I, really can’t say I’ve had that. I had that much technical experience.

Experience? I’ve learned a lot throughout this project. I do have, some pretty significant experience

working with the Smithsonian and the communication of science.

And so, a lot of what I contributed to this on, on this project was,

kind of a how to, talk about how we are kind

of converting from GLOBE to what we think could be a better system. And then also

kind of trying to optimize for citizen science is sometimes, you know, when you have these grand ideas for projects, it’s easy to let them,

slip away from you or become much bigger or more expensive than you really have the capacity for, than what’s even intended.

And so I have found a lot of joy and, helping to kind of

stay on track towards a citizen science goal. I think in terms of division of labor,

like we were talking about earlier, I definitely had, limited technical experience.

Nandini has had, a good amount, but none of us have had an exorbitant amount of technical experience.

And so we kind of just fell where our interest lied. And, you know, we’re,

you know, it’s a small team, so everybody gets a bit of a little bit of everything anyway, but,

you know, we we all have our unique passions and I’ve worked hard to integrate those into the project overall.

Fantastic. Neeve. Yeah. So, as Sam mentioned, like, I was kind of,

going into that little bit of everything type of flavor. So I personally have experience with both

the hardware and mechanical engineering as well as software and specifically and how like both of them can be integrated.

So I helped sort of design and plan how and what the drone could do,

as well as how we would integrate that with some specific systems

that our AI and software models could use to make sure that the entire system

solves the problems that we want to, while making sure that everything’s reliable and affordable.

Fantastic. Nandini Yeah. So,

I definitely agree with Sam, and you’ve talked about how we kind of did go where our interests, lay in the very beginning.

We started our working group is actually about ten person group. And, the very first thing that I had to do

so that we could get some progress in deciding what projects we would do was, you know, introduce ourselves and introduce what we like to do in a technical standpoint.

So we had a little Google document with a list of all that and all the ideas. And that’s kind of how we split which people went to do our friends,

which people went to do a different AI based project and that kind of stuff. I would say in terms of vision and division of labor,

I always liked the hands on building component the most. I, I mean, I was I’m grateful my parents have allowed me

to take over my half my basement and, build, I guess whatever I need.

I used to do a lot more art down there, but I end up switching it into more of a little basement lab setup. So,

and, you know, I want to go into mechanical engineering. The physical hands on stuff is, what, my favorite part of it.

So that’s why I decided to build the drone itself. And, also, like, I have familiarity with being up at

like 2 or 3 in the morning and saying, guys, this thing’s finally work. So I’m sure Sam, Jordan and Neev remember the, every so often, like a 1

or 2 minute video of like, demonstrating something, working in that kind of stuff. So I mean, I feel like it, I felt what would be the highlights of my day,

I’m very happy to hear that it’s it’s so. Yeah. Fantastic.

And then Jordan. Yeah. So, so before EarthLens. Right. And I also have to say Nandini. Yes.

I did love watching those videos. But, before working on EarthLens, you know, I also didn’t have much

hands on experience with a project at this caliber. So I know I had done some programing and,

but of course, again, it wasnever at the extent that we did it with this project with EarthLens.

Right. So, specifically my role in EarthLens was really focused on the application itself.

So, I worked in designing how the app processes data from the sensors in the cameras and, you know, turns it into real time insights.

About land cover, of course, going back to things like vegetation and, soil and water, we also tested a lot of troubleshooting

to make sure the system was reliable and, accurate. So, yeah, I have to say,

I think the thing we’re most proud of was how we all grew in the process. So, from almost no experience to a project

that caught a lot of attention at that, conference. Right. And it taught us, you know, how to build

from nothing to making such, we took a big stride, I have to say.

Building on a Mature Program

What do you think GLOBE added to the project? I’d honestly say without GLOBE there is no project because that’s what really gave us

the foundation of what already exists and what we want to improve upon. And from that introductory sense, I think GLOBE is phenomenal.

And what it does, it’s a very accessible technology, and what it means to do is to get that scientists,

if like they get citizen scientists activated and mobilized in a way to give our actual professional scientists the data that they need.

And what we just saw was the opportunity to make that whole system better and more optimized.

And that is in no way is they saying that GLOBE is not doing what it was meant to do.

Yeah. And I also have to say, you know, science is in science without problems, right? So of course, using the GLOBE, it was a really strong introduction

to remote sensing. I personally had no idea what remote sensing was.

And then we, of course, we got into the SEES program. We got accepted into the Earth systems explorers.

And they taught us about, you know, the GLOBE app. And working working with the GLOBE app taught us, you know, to collect consistent and accurate data.

And of course, speaking from my experience, doing all that data aggregation and all that, it took close to eight hours in total.

And then I took all my photos and I was praying that they all, you know, saved to the database.

It was 216 photos I took. I lost 202 with the GLOBE Observer app.

But of course, it again, it is phenomenal at what it does. But it was just a little bit of a misstep.

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And it it showed, you know, it got your hands dirty.

You had to go out and do the field work and you had to do the ground truthing. And it was a, it was a

messy process of how to, you know, compare what you’re seeing versus what sensors orbiting the Earth are telling you.

And it’s great. You know, highlighting that friction.

We just think, you know, there the there’s a system that could improve upon what GLOBE has already been able

to do for citizen scientists that we can pursue.

Skills Development & Teamwork

are there any other skills that you would like to mention that you developed through the project that you haven’t already mentioned?

I’d say personally, for me, one of the main soft skills that we were able to build was definitely like working with a team.

I think this was a big emphasis that our mentors at the SEES internship had given us, and they given us resources

like their one team building module and how to do research in teams. And I feel like

it was definitely really important for us being spread out all across the country. But the fact that we were still able to be so productive and have that sort of bond

in that connection between us to make sure that we were all on the same page. You know, those videos that I was sending, like, that’s the type of stuff

that makes us all know what’s going on and be, like, happy with what’s going on and make sure that we’re all communicating perfectly.

Yeah. And I’d say also the skills to take what’s happening internally

in our team and be able to communicate that externally. So from, you know,

Nandini building the drone and Jordan building the app. And so collaborating on,

you know, how to quantify, results from the, the research we did with GLOBE and comparing what the drone gives us.

Like that’s all the technical stuff that that goes on inside. And then being able to

put that all down on a poster in an abstract or in a paper and put that out into the world for people to get an idea of what we’re working on

is it’s it’s a lot of abstraction. And that is a skill that we’ve definitely developed through this project.

Agricultural Applications

how do you see EarthLens being used, say, for agricultural monitoring or environmental research?

How would you like to see it use as well? I mean, I would say the way I envision EarthLens,

especially in these earlier stages right now, is, we plan to put together, I’ve started drafting this, a guide similar to the inspired by the STELLA

Guide of components of how to build each, one of these drone systems and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, now, since each year we’ve started communicating more with researchers across the country who have expressed interest in it,

and we hope by getting it into a larger audience like that, continuing that integration with STELLA, we could have it be something

that a hobbyist or classroom, or that kind of stuff. People could actually start building these and using them in their own

communities, kind of like, kind of like how we use GLOBE. But I think the benefit of it being a drone is that as we adapt it,

to be able to fly higher and have a bigger field of view, it’ll be useful for maybe if there needs to be a weekly observation

of certain fields or agricultural areas, like you were saying with the coasts earlier and that kind of stuff.

I think it could be useful. Starting from this research perspective and continuing

from seeing like environmental stability and things like that. So, yeah, yeah, just

just to add to that, you know, you hit on the agricultural piece a bit, but the the sheer advances in technology that have,

occurred in agriculture over the last few decades are amazing. And it’s what allows us to feed, you know, the,

the modern population of the Earth and a growing population of the Earth.

That’s really important. And technology is one of the main ways we’re going to be able to continue to do that.

The way I envision EarthLens kind of being able to do that is right now you have, you know, you can survey your land to to an extent

and you can use the satellite data that’s made available to farmers to, you know, inform

the parts of land that tractors go over to fertilize or the different seeds that are planted on different portions of land.

And those are all based on satellite data as it is now. And, you know, in the research we did in the seed

program, comparing ground data to satellite derived data, we saw that there are inaccuracies in that seasonal inaccuracies,

spatial inaccuracy, inaccuracies, temporal inaccuracies. And if you have if you have something like EarthLens that’s small,

that’s modular, that’s easily deployable, that’s personalized and easy to use. But that still turns out quality data.

More immediately, you can, you know, imagine a farmer launching a few EarthLens drones and having them fly over their field

like Nandini said once or twice a week and get maybe even a more detailed image of their land than they would for modern satellite, data.

And so there’s a I really like this question about how to use EarthLens or similar technologies in agriculture.

building off of that, have you, played around with any vegetation indices since you’ve been, doing, or at least thinking about,

like, plants and agriculture and land use and all that? We’re not fully there yet.

Right now for this first iteration. Right now. I mean, right now we’re working on more mechanical challenges. Like, for example, a big thing is that the light bulb battery

for example, to power this is pretty heavy. It’s pretty heavy. And it’s time. And, right now, our maximum estimated flight time,

I’ve been working towards is probably about 20 to 30 minutes a piece right now. Now, we ought to work towards extending that or making

that battery system more interchangeable. And then in that next level we would integrate, though still, like the air quality systems and things like that.

Thankfully, our flight controller gives us things like accelerometer and, you know, other specific motion and gyroscopic related data.

But I think as we keep adding on different layers, we’re going to start, you know, maybe seeing if we can train it like, as Jordan,

you were saying earlier in the AI standpoint towards data sets with healthier or non healthier vegetation,

knowing what to flag in an image and that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I have to say, I also I really like the question

when you touch based on the, agricultural side. So I am from the Rio Grande Valley and, Texas, and it’s a region

where agriculture plays a very important role, of course, not just to the economy, but to the community as a whole.

So I’ve seen firsthand how much farmers rely on knowledge of the land, you know, the weather, the crop cycle to make, these decisions every day.

And that’s, of course, where we see EarthLens making that difference, because it can collect data from sensors

and, you know, cameras and processes, as, Sam had explained. So you know, coming from the region so connected to agriculture,

EarthLens has been exciting, of course, because it can, really improve this, agri agriculture that we have here in the Valley.

Comparing with NASA Satellite Data

Are you inspired by any of the, different, NASA missions and Earth science that you’ve, you know, sort of, probed at?

And then which ones have you really taken a look at? Is it just Landsat or are there others out there as well?

And if you are doing Landsat, you know what? What might have inspired you with Landsat as well. So go ahead.

Yeah. So we’ve we’ve worked with quite a few different earth science projects, I think from the original data sets

we were comparing our ground truth data to, we were pulling from Landsat. We were pulling from,

a few different data sets, with Dynamic World and, yes, array and world cover and,

a few different tree canopy data sets.

And then we also, you know, again, worked with Landsat time series data, which was cool to interact with.

I for me personally, I wouldn’t say there’s one specific, Earth science project, that I’ve been,

you know, singularly inspired, but inspired by the we did hear from one of the main engineers who’s working on the NISAR mission,

which is a very newly launched telescope that uses some really cool technologies to get information you never seen before.

But I think in, in when you take them all together and you get, you know,

a more complete image of Earth systems and science on Earth, that’s kind of the part that truly, has inspired me.

You know, the goal of NASA to continue that kind of research, I personally feel is, is very valuable.

And so that’s kind of what’s inspired me throughout all of this. for it. Now the only thing right now least existing, the only thing we’re

comparing our global observer data to is that kind of Landsat and Sentinel data. And as things continue to change, I mean, having satellites that are is in the hand

of, labs on their own or hobbyists and that kind of stuff. Still being able to contribute some to some sort of shared thing,

maybe like an ArcGIS layer or something like that gives us, you know, another thing to verify against.

And I think that’s, definitely a motivating factor to keep using that

in conjunction with the satellites while we, you know, while we can and, allowing that to be a technology that continues to evolve

alongside it. what would you like to develop further if you could continue this project?

Future Developments

And do you have plans to. Yeah. So I’d say, on top of, like, that whole AI and automatic classification goals

that we have where we wouldn’t have to manually classify each pixel of the data that our drone takes, the AI would take care of that.

On top of that, we also have an idea of perhaps adding intelligence to the flight patterns of the drone So in a way,

making it an automated flight, which would make the entire, system a lot more efficient and make it easier for people like average

Joe’s to be able to use the entire system. And I’d say as as EarthLens as a whole, like, scales up,

there’s a lot of potential for it to integrate with external platforms that already provide data sets and have this sort of connected

infrastructure, which would just make the data that EarthLens gets. And people using EarthLens have been taking and putting it out there

for a lot more people to use, and having a lot more eyes on that same data.

Yeah, I definitely think that’s a very great way to keep progressing it. And I think from the hardware perspective, I think, like I was saying before,

integrating that carbon dioxide centered, sensor and integrating some of the things that are being added in some of the new STELLA, variations

would be something that we plan on implementing back into drone and automating flight patterns is actually, the reason why we switched to that idea

of, flight software. So that’s the easiest way to go about that in the future. So I think it’s definitely, good that we’re starting to explore

these possibilities of what we’re going to do in the future now, so we can kind of make those steps as easy as possible, like starting

from where we are today. But we definitely all have plans to keep continuing this project, at least for the next couple of years and that kind of stuff, because now

we see how valuable a continually updating or continually improving, application or system like this can be. So

yeah. And then any, any kind of tapped on it but earlier.

But the end goal is the citizen science access and the whole point of making tools

available for average people to collect scientific data is to make that

data available to researchers who, you know, we’ll know what to do with it, know how to draw conclusions.

And so we hope so. Also continue work with EarthLens in terms of,

how to get that data out to researchers and how to allow users of EarthLens to make their data accessible.

The app is the main way we want to do that, but also we hope to maybe one day have enough data to make a meaningful,

geographic data layer on some other software like ArcGIS or something like that.

Experience Influencing Future Pathways

how does this experience influenced your career interests or academic plans? So, like I said

earlier, the, the SEES program, you know, it was my first real kind of technical and scientific experience.

And I definitely want to continue that,

I want to study engineering in college, and I think I’m going to try and continue with that. I’m planning on going to a school

that allows you to do a lot of interdisciplinary study. And, you know, being involved in EarthLens is also,

generating a lot more curiosity for me about Earth science and, kind of the associated

technologies and space that, help us conduct our science. So I’m really excited to,

continue in that sort of direction. Yeah. For me, I’d say the process of developing EarthLens

and the SEES internship as a whole, it’s kind of me, made me firm that I want to keep being like this sort of inventor.

I’d say the fact that we were able to design and create something that didn’t exist before and this like, completely our brainchild, is so cool.

And that kind of motivates me to keep on doing that sort of tinkering, that sort of problem solving.

And especially in this, like using this interdisciplinary nature, but making sure that we’re grounded in solving real world environmental issues.

Really beautiful. Yeah, I would say for me, it’s made me more solid in my decision to pursue mechanical engineering for my undergraduate degree.

But I because, you know, I’ve I’ve had such a wonderful time, integrating this building with so many different other aspects of it.

And, like Sam, I mean, I think it’s made me a much more interdisciplinary builder, considering my prior experience is more aerospace connected.

I think that exploring Earth science and more applications here, it’s made me more willing to explore,

all different things under NASA and scientific purview. And, I mean, I plan to continue studying, hopefully

in grad school, neither aerospace or nuclear engineering. And I feel that EarthLens and this experience in Earth science

has given me, the willingness to keep exploring in that regard,

you know, and keep seeing which type of engineering is close to me at that point. Yeah. So, I totally agree with what everyone else has said.

I am a junior, so I still have, you know, a year to think about, at least a year to think about it, but not a lot of time.

Right. But working on EarthLens, you know, through NASA SEES you know, really shaped my interest in what I do want to become and that is, aerospace engineer.

So before this, I hadn’t, of course, I have already said, I hadn’t had much experience with projects at this scale.

And, you know, SEES exposed me to that. You know, the real world engineering challenges such as, you know,

collecting aggregation and analyzing, complex environmental data, you know, designing systems to process that data efficiently, too.

And, making decisions based on the real insights. Right. So I think the experience also taught me how to approach problems method.

With the method. Right. So to adapt things that didn’t go as planned and to think critically about, you know, how technology,

can be applied to solve, big real world problems. Right? So, participating in SEES influenced my goal of going to UT as well.

UT Austin. It made me realize what, I want to be in an environment where I can work,

you know, with great ambitions, you know, impactful projects, and continuing to grow as a thinker and, of course, a problem

solver. what was the most rewarding aspect of working on this project?

Most Rewarding Aspects & Takeaways

You know, like, what do you hope people take away, from learning about EarthLens? And is there basically anything else about the project that you’d like to know?

So, some sort of combination of those three?

I think, you know, these have been pretty comprehensive questions. You talked a lot about what EarthLens is for and how we hope it gets used.

If, you know, if you if if, you know, God forbid, the projectnever gets finished

or if younever get your hands on an EarthLens drone.

The thing I would hope that people learning about it take away is just that, these things

don’t have to be, stagnant. The way we study Earth can evolve with technology.

And I think it should, because, you know, we have better ways to collect data,

better ways to interpret that data, better pipelines for that data and more data

and all of that in in together just means we get a better picture of our Earth.

How it’s changing. There’s a lot of ways that influences policy economics.

And, you know, just in general, we hope EarthLens gets people excited

about studying the Earth for change. Yeah, I’m 100% agree with that.

And I would say, I think a big thing that I guess anyone, especially maybe high schoolers or college students or people newer to these kinds of things, can,

I guess, learn, is that, I mean, we all came with relatively small amounts of experience in here and kind of used whatever we learned through this.

Internship program to formulate this kind of mission. And it felt it felt nice to kind of, I guess, like,

as you said, to be a group of, you know, inventors in this regard. And something we weren’t as familiar with.

So I think it hopefully should encourage to keep learning and I guess keep tinkering about this kind of stuff, considering, you know,

I mean, you can you can build a drone that can do these kinds of things in your own basement. You know, there’s there is more capability to do these kinds of things

outside of the traditional laboratory or, environment.

That’s typically seen for more professionals or more for adults. Yeah, I’d say personally for me, touching on like that

most rewarding part, I’d say some of the most rewarding, like emotions that I felt were when we were all on call

and we’d have like, we’d be throwing out different ideas and then as soon as we’d hear one, then we think of one that stuck.

It’d be so rewarding just to feel like, hey, you know, I can see this. I can envision this actually coming into existence.

And I’d say one of the beauties of like, the whole process of EarthLens in general

is that in a way, it has like endless possibilities, right? Like so far, how we’ve thought about it.

We have like a few different ideas that you can go into use here. You can go to use there.

But at the end of the day, we’re still high schoolers. And that’s one of the goals we have with reaching out to experts in the area

like Michael Taylor, like people at NASA, at like for over at different universities,

because they’re going to give us so many new insights about where we could take this, what we could add and how we could keep building.

And for me personally, right, I think the most rewarding experience of working on this project was,

seeing how we could develop, what we could develop can actually make a difference. And again, reiterating we’re all just high school students, right?

I mean, we made this project from scraps, right? So one thing that really excited me,

of course, was also the power of citizen science and how a tool like this project can let anyone contribute to,

you know, collecting data and understanding environmental data. So it’s amazing, I think, that this project could really connect

communities, you know, students and researchers across the country. In terms of goals for EarthLens, I really hope it continues to expand.

You know, I think we all really think we’re just gonna, you know, keep driving, right? Of course, we’re from all literally all four corners of the United States.

Right. So, sometimes there’s a little bit of a challenge in getting, communications,

but we work it out with our, with our, time zones and stuff like that. Right. But, I also wanted to take a moment to, thank NASA SEES right.

And of course, you, Michael Taylor, for allowing us to, present this project.

Yeah, it’s it’s been an amazing opportunity. You know, being part of that program was a huge learning experience.

And, it inspired all of us to keep exploring, right? Building and contributing to projects that, you know, have meaningful real

world applications.

From Orbit to Earth: Agricultural Workforce Development using Real-Time Spectrometry

Michael Taylor — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 14:51:21 +0000

From Orbit to Earth: Agricultural Workforce Development using Real-Time Spectrometry

Video Summary

At Garden City Community College in Kansas, Assistant Professor Elisa Mai integrated STELLA spectrometers into her Technology in Agriculture course during fall 2025. The partnership came together when Kansas State University recognized that the college’s newly developed Crop Production Technology program aligned well with NASA ACRES‘ goals. Mai’s program trains students who want to return to family farms or become agronomists, and the STELLA instruments provided a hands-on way to teach remote sensing and precision agriculture concepts. Students used STELLA-1.2 spectrometers alongside Landsat 8-9 satellite data, supplemented with soil data from web surveys and elevation data, to measure spectral differences between surfaces like concrete and grass, and healthy versus stressed vegetation. “Having the STELLAs there was cool because we were able to see at the moment what those wavelengths actually looked like,” Mai explained. The real-time visual display helped students understand wavelength changes that were previously abstract concepts when viewing satellite imagery alone. Students collected field data that the NASA ACRES team—including Jacob Orser, Mike Humber, and Allison Bredder—helped analyze, then completed projects visiting multiple field sites and presenting their findings.

“It made it easy to explain and I think it was cool for the students to see just from walking around and pointing the STELLA at the ground what was happening. I think it really made that part make more sense because when we were looking at satellite data, they’re like, oh, yeah, of course. These points that we’re looking at and we mapped are different. But being able to actually see the jump in those wavelengths was pretty useful.”

– Elisa Mai

Mai extended the technology’s reach by showcasing STELLA at a campus STEM fair, where she demonstrated spectral differences between bare dirt and plants for students and faculty from across the college. She kept explanations accessible, comparing the instrument’s readings to printed NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) satellite imagery without overwhelming visitors with complex equations, recognizing that many attendees didn’t know satellites could monitor plant health. This approach helped introduce precision agriculture technology to potential students in a way that felt approachable rather than intimidating. The course introduced basic concepts like different types of light, how satellites are used in farming, and wavelength analysis, with students going out to fields to gather data and bring it back to the classroom for analysis.

For the next course iteration scheduled for spring 2027, Mai plans several improvements based on the first implementation. She wants to provide deeper technical instruction on how STELLA instruments actually function, as students used them successfully but didn’t fully understand the underlying technology. Mai also plans to expand field campaigns beyond measuring around campus—taking students to actual agricultural fields to compare good and bad crop sections so they can see real-world agricultural applications. While the first cohort kept instruction “very, very broad” due to time constraints and the novelty of the material, future students will get more sophisticated training in both the technical aspects of the instruments and their practical applications in diagnosing plant health and field conditions.

Transcript

So my name is Elisa mei.

I’m the assistant professor of crop production

technology at Garden City Community College.

And so, basically this last fall semester.

So this would have been fall of 2025.

We started a new class called technology in Agriculture.

And that class, basically

went over a lot of different types of technology and AG.

Everything from seed genetics to satellites and autosteer,

automatic road shut off on farming implements and all things like that.

And then when, K-State kind of brought

NASA Acres and Garden City Community College together,

they thought that we’d be able

to make a really good partnership, especially with my program being new

and being, the program, the crop production technology program.

Was recently developed, and it’s mostly just to train,

people who want to go back to the farm and also people who

maybe want to be an agronomist and basically diagnose plant health.

And so that was kind of the purpose of that program.

So K-State noticed that, what we were doing

would probably fit pretty well with what NASA Acres is trying to do also.

Using STELLA in the Field and at the STEM Fair

So over

last summer, so summer of 2025, we were able to talk about ways

we could include NASA Acres into that course.

And it fit very, very well.

So we were able to just bring it over directly into that.

And that’s where eventually the STELLAs got involved with that also.

So in the class, we talked about a lot of different things,

the different, types of light, how we see things.

Went over like the technology side, or the technical side, I guess.

I guess I should say of that.

Talked a lot about satellites, how we utilize those and farming,

how we could utilize those and went out

to fields, gathered data and everything like that.

And then the STELLAs we were able to kind of get a more hands

on, down to Earth approach looking at that light.

Previously, we had only looked at infrared light

and, all the different wavelengths using satellite data.

So having the STELLAs there, it was cool because we were able to see

at the moment what those wavelengths actually looked like.

And then we recorded some data, and then we’re able to take that back

to the classroom.

And look at the data we gathered from that.

I also

was able to take the Stella’s to a little,

stem fair that we had at the college.

It was just for, well, primarily for Garden City Community College students.

The community was open to the community, but we only had students attend,

and other faculty.

So other students and faculty came.

Saw how the STELLAs worked.

I compared bare dirt to actual plants so they were able to see the wavelengths.

And then I also printed off a, image of basically what we see

when we look at satellite data and those differences in NDVI.

So it was just super, super broad.

I, of course, didn’t go into like the equation and all of that,

because that gets a little much for someone who doesn’t even know

that we can use a satellite to look at a plant.

So, anyways, that’s pretty much what we did at the very end of the class.

The students did a project where they went to a bunch of different

sites, gathered data, looked at a field, and compared it all.

And so they then put that all into a presentation

showing what they found, anything that surprised them.

And that was pretty much the conclusion of that class.

That’s awesome.

And what version of so did you use again?

I think it was the 1.2 to

NASA Satellite Comparison

was there a particular satellite that you compared the data to?

We mostly use Landsat, mostly use Landsat and the others.

I’m trying to remember now.

I don’t think so.

NASA Acres helped a lot with gathering all that up.

But primarily when we did our projects, when it came to the data,

we were using Landsat, I think it was eight, nine

or however you look at that when you’re looking at the data.

It was kind of new to me.

I’ll admit.

So I’m still learning.

And that process of it all.

But then we took other data, like some soil data from soil web survey.

Elevation data.

And I’m not sure where the elevation data, what satellite that was coming from,

because it was already kind of old and gathered.

But that’s pretty much what we used.

The STELLA Experience

what was your experience with the staff?

I really liked the screen

that you could actually see the wavelengths,

because that way when we were, you know, moving from concrete to grass,

I mean, there was just a huge jump all of a sudden.

So it made it easy to explain.

And I think it was cool for the students to see just from walking around

and pointing the STELLA at the ground what was happening.

I think it really made that part make more sense,

because when we were looking at satellite data, they’re like,

oh yeah, of course, these points that we’re looking at and we mapped

are different, but being able to actually see

the jump in those wavelengths was pretty useful.

That was I didn’t explore much with them.

That was primarily what we did is just look at those differences.

And then NASA Acres pulled that data for us

and then analyzed it all so we didn’t have to go through

the whole entire spreadsheet.

So that was very nice.

Trying to think the only issue that we had was

sometimes it was a little it took a while to record the GPS point

and the point that we were looking at and get all that data to load

and record.

So we had a hang up sometimes there.

I’m not sure if that was user error, or what was going on.

So I also had

students trying to do it as well, so that definitely could have been a factor.

But that was our only hang up point.

And we got through it and we still got the points recorded.

So we just knew that we had to just stay in there for a minute,

let it fully do whatever it’s doing in there.

And before we moved on to a different location.

So the were there any, like, cosmetic,

things or issues you had with the stoves or anything like that?

And are there any improvements you would suggest

or things that you would like to see it do?

No, I don’t think so.

Everything seemed to work pretty well.

Once you figured out how to use the dial, it was pretty easy.

I did like that there wasn’t a ton of buttons.

Because then I didn’t have to worry about people pressing things they shouldn’t.

It was just very.

Turn the knob till you’re at the thing, press it in, don’t touch anything else.

So that was really, really good.

They were easy to point at stuff

once I explained, you know, exactly where everything was.

It was easy to work with.

They looked really cool.

And I took them to the Stem fair.

People were stopping in asking me, what is that?

Because, I mean, they they look pretty different.

So, I think that was helpful to.

I know it’s kind of a small detail in the grand scheme of things,

but it definitely helps with the interest in the equipment.

So, I really liked that.

Technical Challenges and Learning Curve

And then how was working with NASA Acres did they?

Were they good.

And who was, who was on the the team that was working with you from NASA Acres

too it was Jacob Orser.

Mike can’t remember Mike’s…

Humber? Yes.

And, yeah, I can never remember his last name.

And then.

Allison. Bredder. Yes.

So, okay, those three awesome people from Acres.

Yeah, yeah, they were great.

Cool.

And so they did, they

when they were there, when you were setting up, you know,

doing all these measurements and all that, did

they go through like some of the process and all that sort of stuff.

Like what was their steps that you all had to take,

before you all started like really taking the measurements and all.

So in the beginning, we looked at, you know,

what wavelengths are, what we can see, what we can’t see,

all of that when it came to the STELLAs we kept it very, very broad.

We didn’t have a ton of time to go into details,

in the future.

I mean, this was our first time running the class,

so I think there’s some areas that we can tweak.

I would like to talk a little bit more about what the STELLAs really are,

what they’re doing, help apply that more on the technical side

because they saw, you know, physically they use them,

but I don’t think they fully understood

exactly what they were doing when they were using them.

And I would say, I don’t really either entirely.

So, that’s definitely an improvement I want to make.

And I want to I think going forward,

all we did was we took them outside of our classroom.

So there was still some green grass out there.

So we were able to just compare, like the pavement to the green

grass, different areas of the grass.

In the future.

I want to do that, but then I also want to travel to a field

and compare good parts of the field to bad parts of the field,

so that way they can see the real comparison there.

So kind of an introduction.

Get used to it, use it once and then actually go out there and

do something with it.

Plans for the Future

Are there any questions that I didn’t ask that you would like me to ask

or anything like that?

That you can think of something you know, that you would like to,

you know, finish off with, you know, thoughts, whatever.

Yeah.

Overall, I’d say just all the support from NASA Acres

and with the STELLA it was really, really great.

The students really enjoyed having a much more hands

on approach to the, remote sensing,

because remote sensing is not much fun to look at from a PowerPoint perspective.

So getting to see a little bit of what’s actually happening was really great.

And I’m excited to improve improve the course for the future also.

Petya in the Field

Michael Taylor — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 19:40:00 +0000

Petya in the Field

Video Summary

Watch Dr. Petya Campbell, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center research scientist, lead an agricultural field campaign using STELLA spectrometers and professional measurement protocols. This documentation shows how ground-based data collection supports NASA’s Landsat program and Earth observation missions while training the next generation of remote sensing professionals.

Featured Expert and Workforce Development

Dr. Petya Campbell brings over 20 years of NASA field campaign experience to this training exercise, demonstrating the professional skills and technical protocols required for Earth science careers. With a doctorate in Remote Sensing for Environmental Applications, Dr. Campbell teaches at the University of Maryland Baltimore County while conducting vegetation research at NASA Goddard. University students participate directly in data collection, gaining hands-on experience with the same measurement techniques used to validate NASA satellite data and support Landsat mission applications.

NASA Mission Applications and Landsat Connections

The field campaign demonstrates how ground measurements validate NASA satellite observations, particularly supporting the Landsat program’s agricultural monitoring capabilities. Dr. Campbell explains the process of converting satellite digital numbers into scientific products like chlorophyll content and canopy height, showing students how their field measurements directly contribute to NASA Earth observation science. The team collected data on agricultural crops with varying nitrogen treatments, illustrating how NASA remote sensing technology addresses food security and agricultural productivity challenges that inform policy and farming practices.

Professional Field Protocols and Technical Training

Students learn comprehensive field safety procedures, emergency communication protocols, and measurement coordination techniques used in NASA Earth science campaigns worldwide. The video documents proper calibration methods using reference panels, instrument operation procedures, and quality control standards that ensure research-grade data collection. NASA ACRES personnel joined the team for several data collection sessions, providing additional professional expertise and demonstrating interagency collaboration in Earth science research.

Career Pathway Development

This field campaign provides students with direct exposure to NASA Earth science career requirements while building technical competencies in remote sensing and agricultural applications. Students operate STELLA spectrometers alongside professional instruments, learning measurement protocols that prepare them for NASA workforce opportunities. The integration of university research with NASA mission objectives demonstrates clear pathways from academic training to professional Earth observation careers, supporting NASA’s need for skilled remote sensing professionals.

Transcript

NASA Earth Science Field Campaign Transcript – Dr. Petya Campbell

Section 1: Field Safety and Emergency Preparedness (0:05-3:14)

Field safety includes a list of everyone in the party, where you’re going, and who’s the emergency contact that’s not with you. We designate a communications point person who has an InReach for satellite text messaging because we’re going to be in places without cell coverage. Actually, we’re pretty much out of cell coverage here at Patuxent, but seriously, when you’re on the North Slope of Alaska, you want to have some way of getting information out.

I go through with everyone on the team how the communication device works, how to turn it on, how to set off the alarm. If I’m incapacitated, then somebody else can use it. We identify a health response person – first aid or first responder. As we introduced ourselves, we found out that Caitlyn has the highest level of medical training among the group, and she has a very complete first aid kit. If somebody has been bitten by a bear or whatever – I’m serious – she has the tourniquet and bleed stop kit and everything. Liz and I have the second level of medical training, so if Caitlyn is incapacitated, we’re prepared to handle that.

One of the really important things is driving. I always check – Caitlyn, you drove the Suburban up the haul road with this team in it. Where are the keys? We identify a second in command like Liz, who knows how to drive a Suburban on the haul road, knows all the safety procedures and CB radio calls. We document all this with a field pencil.

Would you bring a second one for redundancy?

Absolutely. One is none and two is one. We would have at least two complete first aid kits.

Section 2: Field Campaign Planning and Instrumentation (3:26-8:39)

We’re going to use ASD and STELLA to look at pigments. For instruments we need STELLA – which STELLA are we going to use? I want to use a 1.2 and a Q2. So we have those two, plus ASD and chlorophyll meters. Ideally we want to measure leaf area index (LAI), but we’ll put that as TBD for now.

Who’s going to measure with STELLA? Mike will set up the STELLAs and prepare them. Jesse will set up the ASD and panels. We need tripods for the panels. Let’s meet directly at OPE at 9 AM. I’ll go earlier to mark the five sites with flags, separating three measurement points so we can assemble the data properly.

This is why we do the panel measurement sandwich – STELLA measures irradiance, not digital numbers. We do this because we want reflectance. Reflectance is a ratio between the panel measurement and the measurement from the target. We do multiple measurements because the sun is changing position – at 9 AM the sun is here, but at 9:30 it moves up. We need to know the incoming solar radiation at the time of measurement. If you take too long after the panel measurement, you need to take another panel reading.

Section 3: Field Preparation and Experience (8:44-12:03)

For longer campaigns, we’d prepare food. Everyone comes with covered toes – no sandals and flip-flops. I’ve had students show up in shorts and flip-flops, and there are ticks. Socks need to go over the pants so ticks climb up, then when you go home, you check carefully and remove everything. You need hats, water, sunscreen.

Interviewer: How many field campaigns have you been on?

I’m a forester by background. I started in college, then worked for the Ministry for Environmental Protection in Bulgaria, surveying protected areas and looking at plants and animals. I did my dissertation in the Czech Republic doing forest health surveys. I have a doctorate in Remote Sensing for Environmental Applications. I teach at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and do research here at NASA Goddard on vegetation function and health. That’s what makes me happy and drives me in science. I started at Goddard in 2000.

Section 4: Site Selection and Agricultural Context (12:03-17:05)

What makes a good spot to measure? We want it representative of the field. Look at the field out there – we want to measure spots that represent the field. If you turn to the other field, you’ll see it’s nothing like this field. They’re very different. We’ll measure three repetitions here because some areas are denser, some are not, some have more soil cover.

Why are we taking three measurements at each spot? If we have three measurements and some are not good and representative, we can get rid of them. These are soybeans. This field has nitrogen treatments – they fertilize with different amounts: 0, 25, 50, 100. They know what’s optimal for this soil, water, and natural nitrogen content for corn to grow. This area looks like 150 nitrogen treatment because it’s very tall. Over there the corn is smaller and yellowish because the nitrogen is low.

What we do is create equations for satellite products. Satellites get zeros and ones – digital numbers. We need to make it into products like chlorophyll or amount of water in leaves or height of canopy. People need to measure on the ground and make equations to derive the product and make the maps.

Section 5: Technical Measurement Coordination (17:05-25:07)

We’ll assemble the data in files. Make sure Mike tells you the file name for STELLA data. Going from irradiance to radiance is non-trivial – you need distance and field of view for that calculation. But Digital Numbers to radiance is a simple multiplier table. The ASD has a different sensor than STELLA, so the amount of photons it collects is different, but the curves should be the same because they’re relative. That’s why reflectance is always going to be the same.

We’ll coordinate measurements carefully. Before every plot, we put instruments over the white spectralon panel to get the baseline 100% number for reflectance calculations. The measurement sequence is important because the sun is rising and we’ll have differing values. We need the same order of operations between instruments. I suggest people with Q2s first, then the 1.2 last because it takes longer to cycle.

When I take the first data point in the plot, the next person should be over the panel. We want one data point per panel on STELLAs because they take much longer – 20 measurements each.

Section 6: Active Field Data Collection (25:07-33:13)

We’re taking chlorophyll measurements to understand if STELLA can provide information relevant to chlorophyll. Don’t shade the white panel when taking data. If we shade part of it, it’s not getting 100% sunlight like the plants. The white panel is essentially 100% reflective. This is a perfect day because there are no clouds and minimal haze.

Keep the white panel clean without touching it because touching smears things into the porous surface. This is called a Lambertian surface – once light gets in, it reflects in all directions evenly. A pure Lambertian surface reflects at all angles evenly, but nothing is pure Lambertian. This is the closest there is.

Keep your STELLAs at the same height to get similar field of view areas. We want to measure soybeans, not dirt, so position carefully over the plants. We measure the smaller corn because the leaves are less green – they didn’t get as much nitrogen as the others.

This is what I do – this is my work.

The post Petya in the Field appeared first on STELLA.

Student Voices: Real Engineering Success with STELLA Instruments

Michael Taylor — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 15:44:54 +0000

Student Voices: Real Engineering Success with STELLA Instruments

Video Summary

When Inna Shapovalenko and Alexa Matson first encountered NASA’s STELLA instruments, neither expected the transformative 10-week journey that lay ahead. Working alongside Alexa Ross and under the mentorship of Dr. Sam Batzli through the WisconsinView program, what began as summer research positions became a powerful example of how hands-on technology can build both confidence and career readiness.

Breaking Down Barriers to NASA Technology

“I always thought that NASA was something so far from me that I maybe could get access to this only after getting a PhD,” reflects Inna, an international student studying physics and computer science. “But this summer I found out that you don’t have to finish your PhD to work with some NASA materials. You can be even a high school kid.”

This ease of access was central to the students’ experience with STELLA (Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment), NASA’s low-cost spectrometer project designed to make remote sensing technology available to learners at all levels.

The AmericaView Connection

The project came about through WisconsinView’s partnership with AmericaView, a nationwide network that empowers Earth observation through remote sensing education. As Dr. Batzli explains, “We’ve learned through AmericaView that one of the best ways to grow curriculum and outreach is by teaching teachers. When we can have summer workshops where we work with teachers, they can take it into their classrooms.”

The Power of Interdisciplinary Learning

Over their 10-week collaboration, Inna and Alexa discovered that STELLA served as what Dr. Sam Batzli calls “a catalyst for learning”—connecting multiple disciplines in ways neither student had anticipated.

“It was so different from week to week… just the variety of things you get to do,” explains Alexa, a mechanical engineering major. “I didn’t realize it till we did our final presentation—just how much stuff we were able to do. And that was so cool, ’cause it was only 10 weeks.”

The project seamlessly integrated spectroscopy, 3D printing, soldering, programming, and data analysis. When Inna brought soldering expertise and Alexa contributed 3D printing skills, they naturally taught each other, demonstrating the collaborative learning that makes STELLA projects so effective.

Real Science, Real Impact

Perhaps the most powerful moment came when the students compared their handheld instrument data with actual Landsat satellite measurements. “When we were comparing our data with Landsat data… I was surprised when our results got really like they were very, very close,” recalls Inna. “I had the feeling like I touched something… something super unusual.”

This connection between classroom technology and space-based science exemplifies STELLA’s mission: providing authentic scientific experiences that build both technical skills and scientific understanding.

Building Confidence Through Authentic Challenges

For Inna, the project became about more than technical skills: “For me, STELLA is about being confident in engineering. You’re working with many fields, and you can combine your programming skills with soldering—everything. Just enjoy the process and don’t be pressured that it’s something super difficult.”

Alexa found particular value in the problem-solving aspects: “It is really cool to just have so much control over that and then also just be able to problem solve yourself and work with a partner and kinda see it applied to the real world.”

Open Source Innovation

The students were particularly impressed by STELLA’s accessibility. “It’s open source. And you can do it even from your home. And it doesn’t require some super expensive equipment. You can just buy it on Digikey or Amazon and build on your own,” notes Inna.

This open-source approach allows access to sophisticated instruments, enabling students worldwide to engage with similar technologies used by NASA researchers.

Looking Forward

Dr. Batzli sees this as just the beginning: “STELLA is almost like a catalyst for learning. It’s like the spokes of a wheel—STELLA can be the hub in the middle, and there are all these topics and possible questions and things to explore that radiate out from that.”

The success of Inna and Alexa’s collaboration demonstrates how authentic, hands-on projects can simultaneously build technical competency, scientific understanding, and career confidence—preparing students for the interdisciplinary challenges of modern STEM careers.

Their story exemplifies STELLA’s broader mission: making NASA technology accessible to learners everywhere while building the critical thinking and problem-solving skills essential for tomorrow’s engineering, manufacturing, and scientific workforce.

Transcript

00:00:02:13 – 00:00:08:13
Unknown
Thank you all for joining me and discussing your project. Could you please tell me a bit more about your background?

00:00:08:13 – 00:00:13:05
Unknown
Yeah. So, I’m international student at, Franklin

00:00:13:05 – 00:00:28:01
Unknown
and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. I’m currently senior doing physics and computer science. And, in my previous summer, I was doing a lot of robotics stuff for my summer internship.

00:00:28:01 – 00:00:53:09
Unknown
And, then I came to the college, and I was. So was doing, robotics. Like, I built my own drone, and, I also built the unmanned surface vessel. So I really wanted to go to robotics. And, I was just exploring for different opportunities. And, I found, this opportunity from Space Science and Engineering Center about, building the STELLA device.

00:00:53:11 – 00:01:12:04
Unknown
And, for me, my goal was to just develop more skills into, like, so different in 3D modeling. So during also, programing of microcontrollers as well. So CSS major and this hub was my first.

00:01:12:04 – 00:01:13:15
Unknown
Next. How about Alexa?

00:01:13:15 – 00:01:40:05
Unknown
Yeah. So I am from Wisconsin. I am a mechanical engineering major with a certificate in computer science. UW Madison. I have a lot of experience, building my own things and building projects. I love anything I can get my hands on. So I’ve, like, built a small robot, I mean Legos.

00:01:40:05 – 00:02:01:06
Unknown
Everything that, I could possibly do. And then on top of that, I’ve had a lot of 3D printing. Both in class and out of class. So when I found this internship, I thought it sounded great because there are just so many skills that I could apply. I could do the hands on of the actual building on the spectrometer.

00:02:01:06 – 00:02:11:12
Unknown
I could do coding with my CS. And then on top of that, I could, actually take measurements and analyze them. So yeah,

00:02:11:12 – 00:02:15:15
Unknown
So I typically do research at Space Science and Engineering Center.

00:02:15:15 – 00:02:45:01
Unknown
I got my master’s degree there and then was lucky enough to stay on as a full time researcher. I love doing research, but sometimes looking at a computer screen for so long can get a little tiring. So I decided to take on some outreach tasks. So that’s how I started teaching this STEM class in collaboration with, the greater University of Wisconsin-Madison.

00:02:45:02 – 00:03:22:01
Unknown
So they have a program called Pre-College programs, where they basically prepare K through 12 students for the college experience. My group was working with high schoolers from all around the world. Actually, we had students from as far as Kazakhstan to here, and Madison and I taught a two week STEM class. So that covers everything STEM. And I thought it would be a great opportunity to test out our newly bought, STELLA spectrometers.

00:03:22:02 – 00:03:51:13
Unknown
So SSC had hired two undergraduate engineering students who came and order, ordered all the STELLA parts, put them together, did testing with them, and then in collaboration, in collaboration with me, we kind of came up with this short little curriculum that lasted maybe one and a half to two hours in the classroom with our high school students, where we did a little hands on lab with the instruments.

00:03:51:13 – 00:04:18:07
Unknown
And, yeah, the students got to actually test them out. So that was really fun. I had gone over some basics of remote sensing with them beforehand, so just basics of like, what is the electromagnetic spectrum and how, you know, things can give off different wavelengths and energies depending on what they consist of. So we tested out the cell spectrometers in class with the high schoolers.

00:04:18:07 – 00:04:28:11
Unknown
The class was 13 students and they had a really good time getting some hands on experience with the instruments.

00:04:28:12 – 00:04:30:04
Unknown
last but not least, Doctor Sam.

00:04:30:04 – 00:04:51:09
Unknown
my my background is really, I’ll, I’ll start with when I got involved in remote sensing, which was at Michigan State University in the year 1999, actually. And, I got interested in Landsat then, and I was working with the, tropical rainforest information Center that had a huge Landsat archive.

00:04:51:09 – 00:05:21:09
Unknown
And so I got involved in kind of managing the archive, working with, Dave Skoll and, yeah, that that was when I got excited about remote sensing. Then I moved to Madison to work at the Environmental Remote Sensing Center. And, we did have, a handheld radiometer that we used to do upwelling and down milling of, the, gradients over the, over over water.

00:05:21:09 – 00:05:47:03
Unknown
Actually, we were doing a project where we were looking at Lake clarity and we wanted to have some in situ measurements. And, we had a pretty expensive, fancy, spectrometer with fiber optic leads. And it was pretty, pretty cool. I didn’t actually use it at all, though. I was developing the website for it, so I never actually got to play with it with the instrument.

00:05:47:03 – 00:06:14:13
Unknown
And, but I, I think I, you know, I heard about the STELLA program through, you know, going to conferences and, seeing the booth at various places. So, I knew that the back of my mind, it was something I always wanted to, to do. And I thought, well, I’m never going to find the time to do it myself, but if I could get a couple of students who were interested, then I could supervise that and learn about it myself.

00:06:14:13 – 00:06:21:11
Unknown
So, yeah, I, I think I learned as much as as these two did. So yeah. Thank you.

00:06:23:15 – 00:06:25:08
Unknown
How did you first learn about the,

00:06:25:08 – 00:06:28:02
Unknown
instrument and project?

00:06:28:02 – 00:06:30:02
Unknown
Maybe I should start.

00:06:30:03 – 00:06:41:12
Unknown
Okay. So I think, you know, I saw a STELLA display. Probably an AmericaView conference. There was,

00:06:41:12 – 00:06:43:11
Unknown
most recently in that I,

00:06:43:11 – 00:06:47:01
Unknown
made an impression on me. Was in Denver.

00:06:47:01 – 00:06:57:01
Unknown
And it was, I think an ASPRS conference. And maybe win or not, you my. You were. I’m pretty sure you were there, Michael.

00:06:57:02 – 00:07:20:10
Unknown
Yeah. At least your booth was. This was represented a lot of kids groups coming through it was Denver schools and stuff. Anyway, and I thought, you know, I really, I, I just think it’s such a great idea to be able to build your own spectrometer and learn the principles of remote sensing, but a hands on tool like that.

00:07:20:10 – 00:07:28:09
Unknown
And so, I when I had the opportunity to, create a, an I,

00:07:28:09 – 00:07:50:07
Unknown
a couple positions in our summer, internship program at the Space Science and Engineering Center at UW Madison, we, I signed up to to sponsor one student. But, when I got the resumes and the, letters of interest, these two was tied for the best.

00:07:50:07 – 00:08:14:11
Unknown
So I decided I should just take on two instead of one. And one of the cool things was I saw they had different skill sets, and they, taught each other during this process. So having two people was really great, I think. Inna had some soldering skills and, Alexa had some 3D printing skills and they shared those with each other, and now they both know how to do both.

00:08:14:14 – 00:08:20:02
Unknown
So yeah. Pretty cool. And and then I’ll let them explain how they learned about it.

00:08:20:05 – 00:08:24:04
Unknown
What initially drew you to integrate STELLA instruments into your educational programing?

00:08:24:04 – 00:09:06:09
Unknown
Yeah. So, Sam and I work on a project called AmericaView. So a lot of states have their own WisconsinView. So we’re WisconsinView, we’re part of America view. And our mission is to empower, you know, Earth observation through remote sensing. So we do a lot of satellite remote sensing, but, at SCC, we do some other, ground based remote sensing, but we you know, as, as the outreach person for WisconsinView wanted to come up with ways, you know, not just to talk at students, but to let them actually get their hands on the science, which can be

00:09:06:09 – 00:09:47:09
Unknown
really hard to do with satellite data. Just because you need some programming knowledge. Some. Yeah, just a lot of computational and technical background, to actually play around with that. But with the stellas, you know, they could actually hold the instrument in their hands. You can’t really do that with a satellite. So that was our main motivation was how do we expand Wisconsin View’s outreach efforts to continue giving students more of a hands on experience with remote sensing concepts and remote sensing instruments with the Stella.

00:09:51:06 – 00:09:57:11
Unknown
What were your specific roles during your internship at the Space Science and Engineering Center?

00:09:58:05 – 00:10:30:09
Unknown
Yeah. So, our main role, we worked through a lot of it together. And, we essentially used to get step by step, I know, you know, started her internship actually, before me. So, she, started with actually ordering all the parts. So, she technically did that all for me. Which is great. So I on my first day, we actually already had all the parts we needed, so, that was pretty cool.

00:10:30:10 – 00:11:03:03
Unknown
And then, from there, we, essentially, walked through, like, we started with the Q2 since I was the simplest one. And, our process just, going step by step, building our spectrometers, designing the case for the Q2 working on the 1.1. And then once we had all of that incorporated, then we got to do data, and then we got to programming, so that we could actually, you know, interpret that data.

00:11:03:04 – 00:11:16:09
Unknown
So it really changed from week to week, which was really cool because you got to test out so many new skills. And you weren’t doing the same thing every day.

00:11:16:09 – 00:11:35:09
Unknown
I came two weeks earlier before Alexa, start with her internship, and I just ordered parts. Everything else we did together. And, especially Alexa was very helpful in debugging, apparently. Alexa didn’t mention, but some of her details were not working.

00:11:35:10 – 00:11:57:05
Unknown
And, yeah, Alexa can go over this. Like, why is that work? So yeah, we just had a lot of debugging as well. And, maybe it would be nice regrade the small note for future people in case of the got into some the same troubles. They spent a lot of time there will already like see the solution of this.

00:11:57:09 – 00:12:12:02
Unknown
So excellent. And so to the to those different points. One thing you know, the experience of actually purchasing the parts. Did you have any troubles there? Oh no. It’s pretty much straightforward. Okay.

00:12:13:14 – 00:12:30:04
Unknown
just add that, you know, as the university has pretty specific ways of buying things. And so we had to work with our purchasing department and they showed us how to, to, use that.

00:12:30:04 – 00:12:54:01
Unknown
We had to first demonstrate that we couldn’t buy the some of the parts from existing vendors that served the university, but some of these are very specialized. And so we were able to, justify using the sources that were possible for us to get all the parts. And, but and then there were a couple of defective parts that had to be returned.

00:12:54:01 – 00:13:18:08
Unknown
And, you know, we went through a couple of cycles of that, but, it was, so it was part of the learning process. And I wanted in know the experience that, because that’s real, you know, like when you’re dealing in, in you and within some sort of corporate structure or whatever, you have to go, you have to follow the rules of the, of the game.

00:13:18:08 – 00:13:33:15
Unknown
And sometimes that’s inconvenient, but, we, so that was, that was part of the learning thing that maybe Alexa missed that, but that’s okay. Alexa got involved in returning parts though, so I think, got you a suitable amount of red tape that was game.

00:13:37:12 – 00:13:41:12
Unknown
was this your first dip into, using the STELLAs for teaching?

00:13:41:12 – 00:14:01:01
Unknown
Yes. We had been wanting to use the stylus for a while with WisconsinView. And we, you know, finally had enough money in our budget to hire engineering students to build them. So this was our first little foray into using the STELLA’s at all.

00:14:01:02 – 00:14:06:11
Unknown
So, yeah, this was this was, rookie experience for me. Okay.

00:14:06:11 – 00:14:13:01
Unknown
how would you describe the STELLA project to someone unfamiliar with it, particularly from an educational perspective?

00:14:14:02 – 00:14:24:11
Unknown
Yeah, that one’s hard. I’m gonna have to think about it a little bit. The STELLA experiment.

00:14:24:13 – 00:14:50:07
Unknown
Well, I would definitely use the word remote sensing. And then, depending on their background, you know, you might have to explain what remote sensing is, which, you know, I like to say is always exactly what it sounds like. Something. Something from far away from a remote location. I really like the phrase that you just used using saying a spectral signature is kind of like a light fingerprint.

00:14:50:08 – 00:15:29:08
Unknown
I think that’s a good way of explaining what a signature is. So each object has their own, you know, special signature. Yeah. If they if they knew what the electromagnetic spectrum was, I would say that we’re, we’ve designed a handheld instrument that. Views the energy that an object gives off at different wavelengths and then relate wavelengths back to, you know, the spectrum.

00:15:32:12 – 00:15:36:03
Unknown
Yeah. And then try to connect that with,

00:15:36:04 – 00:16:05:11
Unknown
I guess I’m always trying to connect it back to, like, what I do, which is satellite stuff. So I would maybe show them or bring them an example of like a Landsat image and, you know, move a cursor or my hand over different aspects of that Landsat image and say, you know, each color or each different area has a spectral signature, and we can measure that from space, or we can measure it from the ground.

00:16:05:11 – 00:16:43:04
Unknown
So we can do it like discretely with a STELLA If we were on the ground. But this Landsat image kind of does it all at once from space. I’d say that it’s. Yeah, a really good handheld, simple tool to use in the classroom that students can use with a little bit of instruction and inform them about, different types of surfaces and properties and paying attention to, to detail and light and optics and how all of that relates.

00:16:43:04 – 00:17:08:05
Unknown
So I would hopefully say it a lot more eloquently than I just did. But yeah, I think something along those lines of a handheld instrument that students can use to get a taste of Earth observations using fundamental science and physics concepts, and adding in a little bit of optics science as well.

00:17:08:05 – 00:17:21:10
Unknown
so yeah. And you mentioned, like, engineering students and all that. Can you tell me, like, you know, sort of like the overall structure of how you, so you had some engineering students come in and build it and all that, and you had the students actually go and use it and all that.

00:17:21:11 – 00:17:35:12
Unknown
How was that whole system set up, like, you know, did, like, you know, did you all do the purchasing and the students do the purchasing, all that sort of thing? And, you know, basically from finished. And what kind of system did you use to actually. Yeah. You know, make this a success.

00:17:35:12 – 00:17:41:15
Unknown
Yeah. So, Sam, was there a official like, advisor or supervisor?

00:17:42:01 – 00:18:09:02
Unknown
So he might have a little bit more details about this, but basically we had them come in with, maybe like a 10 or 8 week plan with different tasks to try to accomplish during that plan. We had there was, of course, some waiting time while parts came in. But the students, the students came in, and then Alexa came in and they, learned about what parts they needed to order.

00:18:09:02 – 00:18:43:14
Unknown
So they placed an order for the parts, through our purchasing office. And we have a great admin team that makes our life really, really easy. So our purchasing and financial staff was a big help here. You know, made sure that AmericaView had or WisconsinView had all the funds to cover what they needed, which, of course, Sam and I had had budgeted for, while they were waiting for the parts to come in, that was their time to do like a literature review and just learn more about remote sensing and the sell itself.

00:18:44:00 – 00:19:19:01
Unknown
At that point, I excuse me, I had reached out to other AmericanView members about what kind of curriculum they had done with the STELLA because AmericaView we we try to meet annually and, we have little poster sessions and I had seen a, a poster on still activities from LouisianaView. So I reached out to their staff and kind of asked them what they did in the classroom, to just start getting ideas of how we wanted to design our curriculum.

00:19:19:02 – 00:19:46:07
Unknown
So the STELLAs were built. They they got the parts, they built the instruments, they 3D printed all the cases and everything they needed. And then came time for, like, calibration and test measurements. I think it took for a while we only had three working machines, but Alexa Matson was able to get that all fixed up before our classroom experience.

00:19:46:08 – 00:20:14:10
Unknown
So yeah, I can’t really go into further detail other than that. For the engineering details, you would have to ask Inna, or Alexa. But yeah, I just, I met with them and wanted to know how many instruments we would have, you know, how many would be be functioning. So we knew how to split up the class, and I let them, you know, know, like the bones of of the activity I wanted to do.

00:20:14:10 – 00:20:48:05
Unknown
But I asked them to, like, design a little worksheet with the tables that they would fill out in the graphs that they would plot. They already had a small presentation, as part of their greater SCC wrap up presentation. So they kind of adapted that to a high school audience. We reviewed that and changed a couple of the details just so it would be easier for younger students to understand, relating it back to other applications such as, you know, looking at celestial bodies and whatnot.

00:20:48:06 – 00:21:10:09
Unknown
So that was pretty much the layout of how it went. We did some prep work leading up to the actual classroom experience. They came in beforehand and just wanted to get an idea of like, what the ambient light would look like in the classroom. So they came in a week prior just to get a feel of the space and how it would work.

00:21:10:10 – 00:21:22:08
Unknown
But they did a lot of the work themselves as far as like designing, the worksheet under, under my guidance and, and having a plan of what we were actually going to be doing in the classroom.

00:21:25:01 – 00:21:26:05
Unknown
You know,

00:21:26:05 – 00:21:31:10
Unknown
could you walk us through the development process for the STELLA data analysis website?

00:21:31:14 – 00:22:05:01
Unknown
Yeah. So this website I developed on my own, because the, like, this entire STELLA project was for organizing, for high school kids, like, and actually, they have, like, say, like summer school. So we really needed, like, a tool which can, very quickly analyze data and, show students final result and, at first we decided to use, the star data viewer work.

00:22:05:02 – 00:22:26:05
Unknown
But the problem is that it doesn’t support the STELLA-Q2 version. So after this, we started to play around the curve to have still to make it possible. And at first we thought just to write, like own Python program, but it was not user friendly. So after this, we decided that maybe it’s better just to make a website.

00:22:26:06 – 00:23:06:03
Unknown
And, this how we come out with this website, and it has, like a select, circuit circuit that, yeah. And, we had two versions of the website. One was, a graph, another one just a table. And, in the end, we decided just to use was a table as, we wanted, that kids could make, could plot their graph on their own on pencil and paper, not only like of tomatoes everything, but also gives them opportunity to to live in 21st century without all possible devices.

00:23:09:05 – 00:23:15:08
Unknown
Alexa, what are the what were the main challenges in designing the case modifications for the Q2?

00:23:18:07 – 00:23:47:00
Unknown
Making sure you’re getting the exact correct, dimension you need. There are times like, I think my first case was like, by some miracle, all of it fit except for the microprocessor, which, like the alignment holes, were just like, two millimeters off. So that’s that’s a lot of, the struggle in it is just making sure it’s very exact.

00:23:47:01 – 00:24:10:10
Unknown
And then on top of that, just making sure that it holds up. Well, that it you’re able to click it on and off. You’re able to take it apart and do that multiple times so you don’t have to be worried about it breaking. And then I played around with I had an SD, panel on the back and I was playing.

00:24:10:10 – 00:24:29:01
Unknown
I was having to decide that because I haven’t, I hadn’t designed that before. And I ended up, I was using my mouse, on the back of my mouse, there’s the, removable panel where the battery is. And I remember, like, I kept taking it on and off trying to figure out how it, how they designed it.

00:24:29:01 – 00:24:45:04
Unknown
And so it works. And then I kind of just played around with it on my own, to make that part. So it was a really fun challenge. And there’s a lot of detail in it. But it just made it when it finally came out. Right. That much more satisfying.

00:24:49:01 – 00:24:56:13
Unknown
Inna could you explain the technical differences between the first and simplified versions of the data analysis website?

00:24:56:13 – 00:25:07:13
Unknown
Yeah, it’s a difference. Just, because the first version, you can see a graph, for the second version, there is no graph, there is just a table with data.

00:25:07:15 – 00:25:16:09
Unknown
And, yeah, as explained before, we need this because, we wanted students to work with pencil and paper to draw themselves these graphs,

00:25:16:09 – 00:25:21:00
Unknown
And then, what programing languages and tools did you use in developing the web interface?

00:25:21:00 – 00:25:23:11
Unknown
Yeah, I used just, python

00:25:23:11 – 00:25:56:03
Unknown
The. They have, such nice library as possible. It’s very, very nice library because, you can combine, HTML website, the comic books also with, to assess how exactly you want to your, like, all your buttons work and, you can also program on your own, some functions. For example, in our case, we can, extract some data from the, spreadsheet, but we need then go to what would be like the final irradiance.

00:25:56:04 – 00:26:05:05
Unknown
So the final reflectance is or so I just used HTML like Python and CSS.

00:26:09:04 – 00:26:53:06
Unknown
Well, I was, approached by our, center leadership to help run the program this summer with, with a colleague Dave Hayes and, and so, one of the things that we did was, we had all of the interns that were about, between 10 and 12 throughout the summer. Meet once a week at a, roundtable discussion and go around the table and, and, the students would update on the various projects they’re working on.

00:26:53:07 – 00:27:16:04
Unknown
And I was fortunate because I had a project and I was in that room every week. So I would get the update from both, and, and, and Alexa as well as hear about all the other projects, but and then we would touch base after the, after the meeting to, to talk about any issues or, you know, requirements.

00:27:16:05 – 00:27:45:06
Unknown
I, I leaned heavily on my, colleagues to help. We were our fifth floor of our building is kind of kind of where hardware is, is, created where they developed, the scanning his spectrometer for and sounder for, satellites, you know, so there’s it’s there’s actually a whole clean room and a lot of a lot of high end, technology and people who know how to do all of that stuff.

00:27:45:06 – 00:28:23:15
Unknown
And so, we were lucky that, Rob Lemke, one of my colleagues, was willing and able to help get the, workspaces set up with anti-static mats and, soldering setups for, for both. And I think probably provided some instruction on that to also provided the multimeter that, Alexa talked about needing for and then, so, yeah, I had had buy in from people on, colleagues who work in the area of instrument, instrumentation, which I don’t, you know, I’m more of a, visualization person.

00:28:23:15 – 00:28:54:09
Unknown
So, I needed that help from my colleagues, but. So I think the two things were having regular meetings and then making sure connecting, Alexa and I with the, with the people who could answer their questions or help. And fortunately, both of these these students are. So, they’re self-starters and didn’t require a lot of, micromanaging at all.

00:28:54:09 – 00:29:11:11
Unknown
And I prefer that style. I prefer saying, okay, you can figure it out, and tell me when you do, you know, and, and, and if you can’t, then, tell me and we’ll find someone who can help, you know? So that was just kind of, how we how we did it.

00:29:15:08 – 00:29:23:01
Unknown
the. Not the development. What inspired you to, use the spectroscopic mystery activity? And how did it go?

00:29:23:01 – 00:30:00:01
Unknown
we were looking at the activities that were on the website, and that one sounded really fun and that I got across the different, how to read graphs and, you know, how light works and how you can read reflectance to see the color of things. And on top of that, mysteries are fun. I feel like, kids can connect with that and, get that hands on, experience with what we built.

00:30:00:02 – 00:30:09:03
Unknown
Yeah. So can you describe, like, what your setup was for the for the mystery? What? You, you know, you all did what you all found, useful, so on, so forth,

00:30:09:03 – 00:30:23:01
Unknown
Yeah. So spectroscopic mystery, is pretty much where you have the kids, take their own spectral measurements, using the spectrometers of a variety of different materials.

00:30:23:02 – 00:30:54:15
Unknown
And then, you can put up, different spectral graphs, and they get to identify, which one they think it is based on their own measurements. And yeah. So when we did it, I believe we had a couple different things. We had, healthy leaves. We tried to get brown leaves or decaying leaves. And we had, like, folders, notebooks,

00:30:55:00 – 00:31:04:02
Unknown
What else am I forgetting? Something? 3D printed cases, which. Yeah. Which, you know, which failed.

00:31:04:03 – 00:31:31:05
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Our first drafts of our 3D printed cases, we were used as, measurements because they’re black and white. So we tried to get, things of variety of colors to, and it was a lot of fun. We had four working spectrometers that we had the kids and split up into four groups. And each group got their own spectrometer.

00:31:31:07 – 00:31:34:08
Unknown
And it worked really well. Yeah.

00:31:34:08 – 00:31:48:09
Unknown
Yeah. So the lab was basically set up so that we had different, materials, different surfaces, and the kids were given a little demo of how to use the spectrometers.

00:31:48:09 – 00:32:12:05
Unknown
I think it was a little hard for them to pick up on. At first. We had four instruments and we split up in like four groups of 2 or 3. I think was was how we set it up. So we took in one group at a time, and we just had them stand around the table. And then we did a demo of this is how you use the instrument.

00:32:12:06 – 00:32:32:05
Unknown
Usually we did sandwich observations. So we do a calibration reading and then a reading of the object and then the calibration reading. So that was a little hard to, to drill in. You know, there used to just like pointing and clicking and having it be that easy, but it’s, a little bit more complicated than that.

00:32:32:06 – 00:32:57:13
Unknown
So we yeah, we went around and did that one group at a time and then gave them the rest of the materials. We had a list of materials that they had to measure. So one was like a healthy leaf, a dying leaf. And then things that we just found around the office. So like red binder, orange binder, black binder, black case, white case, just random things that we could get our hands on.

00:32:57:15 – 00:33:25:00
Unknown
And they took, they took measurements of each of those, and then, yeah, it was a little hard teaching them all how to use the instrument. I couldn’t teach them all how to use the instrument as a class. So we broke up into those subgroups, and I just taught, like 2 or 3 students at a time so they could actually see us clicking the buttons.

00:33:25:00 – 00:33:49:10
Unknown
And holding the instruments. And they were a little confused with, how they were actually going to get the data because we had to use data readers to get the information off the machine after all the measurements had been taken. So what they did was they did like calibration, measurement, calibration, and then they wrote down batch numbers to reference.

00:33:49:10 – 00:34:15:09
Unknown
And they were like, why are we writing down these batch numbers instead of writing down data? So maybe we could have done a better job explaining that. But afterwards we gave them, SD readers that they could plug in to their laptops. Each student had a laptop. We took the SD readers out of the Stella’s, and then one of the engineering students wrote a really easy,

00:34:15:10 – 00:34:46:03
Unknown
She put it up a website so that they could extract the data pretty easily. So after they got the data, they had these tables that was just like wavelength versus, reflectance. And so they wrote down each wavelength and they wrote down each reflectance. And then with that data, they had to draw like an X-Y graph of the pattern of reflectance versus or wavelength versus reflectance.

00:34:46:04 – 00:35:19:00
Unknown
So it was a lot of steps to get to the end product. And we ended up not having enough time because they were learning a lot all at once. But it was a really good experience. I think they still took away some knowledge from it. We had some issues with the data not reading and correctly like we were getting, I don’t know, numbers in the thousands for reflectance, which you know, doesn’t make sense because we’re looking we’re supposed to be between 0 and 1.

00:35:19:01 – 00:35:49:11
Unknown
So we had some issues reading in the data where they just had to do the step over again to get their, their valid data and yeah, we had a couple students resulting in trends that actually made sense. So what we were planning on doing was, showing the shapes of wavelength versus reflection up on the board and saying, you know, guess which object this is based on the shape.

00:35:49:13 – 00:36:15:01
Unknown
And then kind of explaining, like, oh, this is more reflective in the green channel because etc., etc., or this is more reflective in red because, it’s close to the infrared, which has to do with heat. So, you know, that’s why the number goes up there. Yeah. We were a little bit rushed at the end. We did run out of time, and since we ran the time, a lot of the kids didn’t get to draw their X-Y plots all the way.

00:36:15:02 – 00:36:35:13
Unknown
So I think we only had one group, with one object came out with it, like correctly. Oh, yeah. So yeah, I would, I would probably better control for, for time next time and just come up with a better way to communicate what they were supposed to do with the time given. But it was still really fun.

00:36:35:13 – 00:36:43:08
Unknown
I think the students had a good time and and walked away with it from it with something. So I consider that mission accomplished.

00:36:46:14 – 00:36:47:12
Unknown
areas where

00:36:47:12 – 00:36:55:07
Unknown
you had issues, can you, can you describe what issues you all ran into in this goes for both or all three of you.

00:36:55:07 – 00:36:55:14
Unknown
Really?

00:36:55:14 – 00:37:14:01
Unknown
so. Well, with my Q2 at least? The problem with the LED button, which ended up being a very simple fix, it was just we had to return it and get a new one. But beforehand it was troubleshooting to make sure that that was the actual problem.

00:37:14:01 – 00:37:38:14
Unknown
So, we used a multimeter to see if voltage was actually getting through and it wasn’t. And then, I actually it was nice having a second person because then I actually, was able to take the button off the second Q2 and then put it on mine to make sure that, it was actually the button. Then it worked so we could be like, okay, this is definitely the issue.

00:37:38:15 – 00:38:11:03
Unknown
And then we went through the return process and luckily the new one worked. And then a bit of, I guess, I also had a sensor, I believe it was the, this spectral sensor on the 1.1 that, didn’t connect. It wouldn’t, connect to. I took a bus, for whatever reason. And it was getting voltage.

00:38:11:04 – 00:38:39:04
Unknown
A light was blinking on it, but, again, it was nice to compare to, you know, because I could see that mine just continued blinking while, hers would turn on and off, and hers was working. So I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. It just wasn’t showing up. When I did the test codes. And, so that’s kind of where the part where I had to do research and see if other people had this problem and other people did have this problem.

00:38:39:04 – 00:39:04:11
Unknown
And apparently it was a somewhat common issue with this specific sensor. So then I, had to go through the return process. Again, I got a second one, but it was from the same batch. So the second one was also faulty. And then it took a few weeks to get the third one, which finally did work.

00:39:04:12 – 00:39:34:04
Unknown
So it was a much longer process. Technically, the spectrometer worked in that time. It just, couldn’t actually, read Visible light, which was, a little unfortunate, but, when I finally did get it, it was very satisfying. And then, yeah, that was, also a sensor that was soldered on, too. Right. So this wasn’t just a matter of plugging it and unplugging it each time.

00:39:34:04 – 00:39:54:06
Unknown
Yeah. So this was the one of the more complicated issues. Yeah. Well, I learned my lesson the first time, because I had sorted it on and tested it and realized it didn’t work. So then for the next two sensors, because the soldering, the whole process I used, I have my own, like, Arduino, control board.

00:39:54:07 – 00:40:07:07
Unknown
And then I just used my own breadboard and tested it on there before soldering it, which made my life a whole lot easier. So that was a good lesson to learn.

00:40:07:07 – 00:40:13:00
Unknown
Excellent. Anyone else? Any any troubles that, weren’t mentioned?

00:40:14:00 – 00:40:40:12
Unknown
Since Scott. No, I just had at first some troubles with screen, but it was just. I just had drawn wiring it first, but then it worked. So there was also, one the first 3D printing of the case for the Q2 the battery didn’t fit, so we had to redesign the case for the Q2 to fit the battery that was on the that we had ordered.

00:40:44:09 – 00:41:00:12
Unknown
what was the most challenging technical obstacle you encountered and how do you overcome it. And this can go not only just to the web interface, but to the STELLA itself. And what was it, the, the chips? Was it, you know, the the redesign of the case?

00:41:00:13 – 00:41:03:01
Unknown
What do you think was the most challenging

00:41:03:06 – 00:41:42:04
Unknown
I remember, building the, 1.1, is that was really cool, but also very stressful because, you know, you’re soldering wires and, resistors and capacitors and, you’re so worried that you’re going to put it in the wrong place and then, like you, soldering is a pain. So I think that, was really cool, but definitely, just going through it and going through every step and like, triple checking yourself, it was really hard.

00:41:42:04 – 00:42:15:10
Unknown
I remember, the wiring, the actual display screen, I think was the most difficult part because, you know, you have to go through the holes and, and do all that. I think at one point I, switched, two wires around and my display wasn’t working. And then I realized I did that. And, it was it was easier to actually, because they’re colored to what the directions had said to make, you know, it easier to identify.

00:42:15:10 – 00:42:42:13
Unknown
And I think I switched the colors, because it was just easier to change, swap the ends than to actually, make them the right colors that it was. So, that part was very technically difficult. But it also practiced a lot of, skills and soldering and, accuracy. Yeah. Excellent. What about you for you in

00:42:42:13 – 00:42:43:11
Unknown
was the most.

00:42:43:11 – 00:42:53:03
Unknown
Yeah. Absolutely same. Absolutely the same. It was just about the checking everything. Because several times making sure that that’s how it’s supposed to be.

00:42:57:00 – 00:43:01:08
Unknown
What would you change or improve about STELLA based on your experience?

00:43:03:04 – 00:43:24:13
Unknown
Or for me, like for STELLA-1.1 I would like to have this in light which you had for STELLA-Q2. It just. It’s so convenient when you can just, hold, the device just in front of the object, which you want to detect. And, the second thing I really liked is a touch screen, which you have on STELLA-1.1.

00:43:25:10 – 00:43:41:10
Unknown
It would be. It would be amazing if you could put this on STELLA-Q2 and you can, read, at the same time, when you’re taking the data, you can read what’s, what’s the data points to make sure that your like really taking data.

00:43:42:10 – 00:44:12:01
Unknown
Excellent. I think you mentioned this before, with the 1.2, but I think having the troubleshooting as you go is a huge help. This because when you’re working with so many sensors and one doesn’t work, I think that would be a huge benefit. But otherwise I completely agree with, Inna, the light on the Q2 was great, especially for taking, like, measurements on leaves.

00:44:12:02 – 00:44:15:12
Unknown
So. Yeah, I think that would be it.

00:44:19:09 – 00:44:32:14
Unknown
How did the hands on nature of solo work affect their ability to ask good scientific questions? Yeah, I know you said there’s only two days, so they might not have a really ask that many, but it’s worth a shot under.

00:44:32:14 – 00:44:42:07
Unknown
I think that it really challenge them to improve their technical language.

00:44:42:09 – 00:45:04:11
Unknown
STELLA was really the only like lab experience that we got to do in class because a lot of it, like we do a lot of touring of the campus and visiting museums and hearing from guest lectures, we did do a lot of programing the first week. So I guess you could kind of consider that, like computer lab time.

00:45:04:12 – 00:45:39:14
Unknown
But as far as, like a traditional lab experience that I think of, Stella was the only one that we did. So I think it challenged them to when asking clarifying questions of, how do I get this to work? How do I upload my data? Like, what exactly is the purpose of writing down these batch numbers? I think it allowed them to improve their their technical communication just by elaborating more on like what exactly are we doing here?

00:45:39:15 – 00:46:16:05
Unknown
Because yeah, like I said, we probably could have communicated like the goal and the steps a little bit more, more clearly to them. Yeah. So just following up and figuring out like, what is the purpose of what we’re even doing? I think it made them a little bit more, more comfortable asking those questions and, yeah, phrasing, phrasing things in a technical way that their instructors and helpers could, could understand and better answer their questions.

00:46:20:03 – 00:46:25:01
Unknown
how did this experience differ from typical classroom or laboratory learning?

00:46:28:15 – 00:46:52:15
Unknown
But I can tell that, for me is the difference was, first of all, you don’t have, like, any, like, deadlines. And of course you have like some weeks at a time when you need to do, but you don’t have to rush about the deadline. So you’re just doing this stuff and, you can really just enjoy the, the process when you’re doing.

00:46:53:01 – 00:47:20:10
Unknown
And the second thing which was from different is that, it’s more like a team work. It’s not just assignment, which just you have, you can work with a team. You can ask, different the type of people about how to debug something as, Sam told We had, and, his colleague Robert Lemke, you helped us very well, so much in electrical engineering.

00:47:20:11 – 00:47:31:04
Unknown
So you can just expand your network with other people and, just enjoy and, learn new skills.

00:47:31:04 – 00:47:34:00
Unknown
Excellent.

00:47:34:01 – 00:48:03:01
Unknown
Yeah. I completely agree with, you know, it’s it’s very, different in the way that it’s very flexible. You can, you can you’re making a lot of, choices and designs yourself, and that’s really cool. You it’s you’re given essentially a goal, but how you get there, you can vary. And that’s a really cool process.

00:48:03:01 – 00:48:18:14
Unknown
And even, coding and, just deciding how you want your graphs to look and figuring out how you want to take the data from the spectrometer and how you want to turn out. It’s just.

00:48:18:15 – 00:48:42:11
Unknown
It is really, really, I was really cool to just, have so much control over that and then also just be able to problem solve yourself and work with a partner and kind of see it applied to the real world.

00:48:46:08 – 00:48:50:05
Unknown
What new skills did you develop through your work with STELLA that you hadn’t anticipated?

00:48:52:03 – 00:49:37:00
Unknown
I think for me, I got to, get a lot of practice with soldering, with, you know, help, which was great. I also, got to, like, I got to learn a lot of trouble troubleshooting with the electronics. With the problems I ran into, which was a very helpful skill. And then on top of that, just the, trying to come up with how to present, spectrometers to, group of students, in a way that they can understand and how to use, and how to read them.

00:49:37:02 – 00:49:39:06
Unknown
That was a fun challenge.

00:49:41:09 – 00:50:13:00
Unknown
Yeah. For me, I, you know, like before, I was usually using, like, fusion 364 street modeling. And for this project, it was my first time when I used SolidWorks was to the model. Also, it was very interesting to explain, about the spectrometer also to my family, not only to kids, because before I was preparing to explain this to my parents and my sisters, and it was very, very interesting conversation.

00:50:13:02 – 00:50:29:00
Unknown
Yeah. Because they’re doing biology. That’s right. But my mom is teaching biology and chemistry, and, she asked me a lot of questions, like how exactly agree with, impacto to my work. Like, how can I explain this to my students? It was it was interesting.

00:50:32:13 – 00:50:42:14
Unknown
based upon your experience, you know, you said you’d like a little bit more time. What kind of teaching strategies, do you think worked well? And which kind of do you think, didn’t work quite so well, you know,

00:50:43:05 – 00:51:19:13
Unknown
I think that hands on learning, supplemented with visual material, always works really well in the classroom because at that age, I don’t really like talking at them for more than maybe ten minutes. Like, I think if we have guest lectures, they’ll sometimes go 30 minutes. But, you know, if we talk and then do something and then talk and then do something, that is the best way for for them to learn, because I think they can really, tune out easily otherwise.

00:51:19:14 – 00:51:40:02
Unknown
So yeah, I think I would definitely break up, lecture material and any like audio and visual learning with an activity or a hands on example. In order for the material to really sink in, better.

00:51:41:09 – 00:51:47:06
Unknown
What advice would you give to other educators wanting to implement similar programs?

00:51:48:12 – 00:52:15:11
Unknown
I would say that it’s probably a good idea to do like, a dress rehearsal, so to speak. Just do a dry run of, exactly how you’re going to teach the students. And one one thing that was kind of a hiccup in our class was that when we were teaching each subgroup how to use the instruments, the other groups were just kind of like sitting and waiting around.

00:52:15:11 – 00:52:46:11
Unknown
It didn’t have like a lot to do. So I would maybe come up with some sort of activity, like where we’re while we’re teaching one subgroup, how to use the instruments and take a reading, the other subgroups can have a collection of materials and kind of take those field notes that we were talking about. So just writing down, observations that they’re making about the materials that they are planning on measuring with the STELLA’s, yeah.

00:52:46:11 – 00:53:00:05
Unknown
So writing about color, texture, surfaces, things like that. I think that would be kind of a good filler activity. So they’re not just like waiting around, waiting to, to take their turn.

00:53:00:05 – 00:53:06:00
Unknown
What aspects of this work do you find most rewarding from an educator’s perspective?

00:53:07:09 – 00:53:34:12
Unknown
Yeah, I think the most rewarding part is when, the students get a result that makes sense to them and looks correct. So we had, one group, you know, draw the actual spectrum line, and the shape, the shape match, match, what it was supposed to look like. And, you know, they this is the first time they’ve ever done this.

00:53:34:12 – 00:53:55:04
Unknown
So they drew their line and made their points and they showed it to, me and Alexa, and they were like, is this right? And we were so excited because they had gotten it right. You were like, yeah, you did it. You did it. And they were kind of confused as to like the fact that they got it right.

00:53:55:05 – 00:54:26:01
Unknown
And so we had to like kind of anthem up and, and be like, yeah, you actually did it correctly, like you did what you were supposed to do. So I think that’s the most rewarding is kind of cheering them on and like, yeah, telling them that they did the activity correctly and then, you know, of course relating in the end back to like why that mattered and why, like what they should have taken away from it.

00:54:26:01 – 00:55:06:09
Unknown
I think when they. Yeah, when they get the right answer on their own, it can be really, really satisfying. When they’re excited about it. I think in this case, they were like confused as to why why they should be excited about it. And we had to, like, tell them why it was exciting. But yeah, I think if we had done a better, a better job of, just the the logistics of the classroom, then we could have had more of that, like satisfying experience of the students, like being really excited that they’ve gotten to the the correct answer or they had gotten something to work.

00:55:10:06 – 00:55:14:09
Unknown
How do you see STELLA evolving as an educational tool in the coming years?

00:55:14:11 – 00:55:17:07
Unknown
I’ll go with Doctor Sam first for this one.

00:55:19:08 – 00:55:48:01
Unknown
Well, I you know, this was such a good experience. I could see, doing this each year with, with, and just building on the results of this group, you know, building I might take on another intern or two next summer and have them do, whatever the next model is of Stella and then build on what, what, Inna and Alexa have done, but also, I think,

00:55:48:02 – 00:56:28:01
Unknown
Yeah, I’d love to see. So I work mostly with atmospheric scientists, meteorologists. And so, land remote sensing is more my background. And I’d like to make sure my colleagues know more about that, because we’re starting to use weather satellites to look at things like fire and smoke and things that are related to land processes. So, I kind of see it professionally, actually helping educate my own colleagues to so I think it could be kind of a I could imagine growing this program within my own, my own work.

00:56:33:06 – 00:56:47:10
Unknown
Okay. How much your contributions to help expand STELLA’s reach. Help expand STELLA’s reach to, more student populations, more in different student populations.

00:56:49:00 – 00:57:24:06
Unknown
You get the question? I think so, I think so this would probably be a good one for Alexa Ross, but, it, I can just say that one of our. We’ve through a new program, we’ve learned that one of the best ways to get to grow, curriculum or, our outreach is, by teaching teachers. And so when, if we can have summer summer workshops or we could work with teachers, then they can take it into their classrooms.

00:57:24:07 – 00:57:48:12
Unknown
And that’s kind of a way to, you know, an avenue for expanding. But I think Alexa Ross has pretty good connections within the Madison community here. And that was in Wisconsin. And, I believe that that, she got plans for her, expanding curriculum and using these tools.

00:57:52:09 – 00:57:55:14
Unknown
so you worked with, Inna and Alexa,

00:57:55:14 – 00:58:16:15
Unknown
what changes did you observe in, intellectual engagement and enthusiasm for STEM learning throughout their STELLA experience? Yeah. I didn’t really work. I worked with them closely towards the end, when we were ready to implement everything they had done into classroom curriculum.

00:58:17:00 – 00:58:39:06
Unknown
But for the most part, they were just really good, self-starting. And, you know, we gave them, like, a schedule of, you know, like week one you should do this week to do this. And they were they didn’t really need much oversight at all. They knew the mission. They were really efficient at, finding what they needed to find.

00:58:39:07 – 00:59:29:03
Unknown
I think it was helpful because Alexa mattson was a UW and or is a UW engineering student, so she already had knowledge of things like where to find the 3D printer and how to get into that makerspace and design and print what they needed. So that was really helpful. I think that I was really impressed at the end with their ability to communicate to the students, you know, not only the background of what like spectroscopy, spectroscopy is, but when they were teaching the students how to use the instruments, just their communication skills, because, yeah, I didn’t interact with them a ton leading up to this.

00:59:29:04 – 00:59:51:11
Unknown
And in a especially seemed a little quiet. So I wasn’t sure how she was going to do like presenting to students, because now you have to speak loudly. There are these loud ventilators in the back of the classroom, so sometimes it’s hard to hear. But they did a really great job. So I was impressed in the end by their science communication skills.

00:59:51:11 – 01:00:25:11
Unknown
And I know that they also had to do like an internal SCC presentation that all of our, student undergraduate interns have to do. So I think maybe, maybe if they had been like preparing or practicing for that, it helped. But they did a great job in the end in the classroom. And, yeah. So I was impressed by their science communication skills, both presenting in front of the class, but also just working one on one with the students who needed a little bit of help on how to, take the measurements correctly and then how to extract the data from the SD cards.

01:00:25:11 – 01:00:37:03
Unknown
They were really willing to sit down and troubleshoot with the student and work with them one on one to, accomplish their tasks and goals. While

01:00:37:03 – 01:00:41:08
Unknown
was the most important thing. You want people to know about your STELLA project?

01:00:45:04 – 01:01:10:07
Unknown
It was such a fun and educational, project. I had so much fun this summer doing it that it didn’t even feel like a job. It, genuinely all the different skills, I got to learn from week to week and, just the way I was so different from week to week, was really great.

01:01:10:07 – 01:01:34:14
Unknown
And this is the variety of things you get to do. It’s. I, I didn’t realize it, till we did, like, our final presentation at the end. Or even, like, putting that presentation together is just how much stuff we were able to do. And that was so cool because it was only ten weeks. And it didn’t feel like ten weeks.

01:01:34:14 – 01:01:36:12
Unknown
So. Yeah.

01:01:36:12 – 01:02:07:04
Unknown
Okay. So yeah, for me, still is. It’s also like about, like be confident about that either, like engineering and, I want to continue doing engineering and, it’s also like about, that you are working with as many fields as I’ve mentioned. That’s right. You you can combine your programing skills like your, like soldering, like everything.

01:02:07:05 – 01:02:24:12
Unknown
And, just enjoy the process and and don’t be, like, pressured. That it’s something super difficult. It’s not like everything, is in Google or ChatGPT So you can just ask them and they will answer you.

01:02:25:01 – 01:02:54:12
Unknown
Excellent. I think the memorable thing for me is the, is, is, is watching these two students teach each other things and learn from each other, and, and, I think, yeah, the stuff STELLA is in this kind of a it’s almost like a catalyst for learning. It makes a lot of learning happen, and it’s all you know, centered around this device.

01:02:54:12 – 01:03:18:09
Unknown
But like Alexa pointed out, it crosses all these boundaries into other disciplines and other, topics. And, so it’s, yeah, I think of it almost like the spokes of a wheel, you know, it’s like this. So STELLA can be the hub in the middle. And there’s all of these topics and possible questions and things to explore that, that radiate out from that.

01:03:18:09 – 01:03:23:14
Unknown
And so yeah, it was just really a pleasure to work, work on this project.

01:03:23:14 – 01:03:42:04
Unknown
How has, working with STELLA changed your perspective on, NASA technology or space science or just, you know, remote sensing and all that? So how does it change your perspective basically on, on the various technologies that are out there?

01:03:42:04 – 01:04:03:12
Unknown
I can do that for me. I always thought that NASA it’s something so far from me that I maybe can get access to this on only after getting PhD, but, this summer I you find out that you don’t have to finish your PhD to work with some NASA materials. You can be even a high school kid.

01:04:03:13 – 01:04:19:06
Unknown
It’s. Yeah, it’s open source. And, you can do it even from your home. And, it doesn’t require some, like, super expensive equipment. You can just buy it on, on Digikey or Amazon and build on your own.

01:04:19:06 – 01:04:42:15
Unknown
I think for me, I, the part of the NASA was focused on is the, like other planets, space access, aspect of it. And getting to work spectrometers and also learning about how it can be used to track wildfires, vegetation health and all these different, applications.

01:04:43:00 – 01:05:03:02
Unknown
Just on Earth was really cool. And then having also, the ability to build an instrument, that’s not super expensive. That’s super simple to use. To actually see that on a smaller scale was was really cool.

01:05:06:15 – 01:05:11:05
Unknown
surprised you most about working with solar technology? And again, this goes to anyone.

01:05:11:05 – 01:05:34:15
Unknown
for me, it was really surprising. The, in the end, when we were comparing our data with, Landsat data, we had the the satellite. What? The name phone was the one set, right? Yeah. So when we were comparing results with when I said I was surprised when our results got really like they were very, very close.

01:05:35:00 – 01:05:57:01
Unknown
And that’s why I was, I was really surprised that, with this very cheap machine, like, can take same result as something that is in the, in space, which is like very, very far away. And, I had a feeling like I touched something like, like something super Samsung unusual.

01:05:57:01 – 01:06:21:12
Unknown
I, I think that thing that was, I was, I was surprised how I wasn’t sure what to expect, honestly, with, like, where are we going to be able to get all the parts we needed? You know, I mean, at the beginning of this, I really wasn’t sure if we were, you know, the goal is to make for spectrometers, but I had no idea if it was really going to happen or not.

01:06:21:12 – 01:06:44:14
Unknown
You know, we had ten weeks and we had all these other goals like, okay. And so I think, you know, we got the parts took about a week. We got the and then they built them so quickly that we had plenty of time to work on other things, which was so great. And, and basically every time we met, it was kind of like, okay, what are we going to do next?

01:06:44:14 – 01:07:05:01
Unknown
You know, like and and so I guess for me, it just what was surprising about the whole program is how it kind of, there was kind of a feedback loop and, almost a snowballing effect where it got better and better as we went along because we got, we got to do more and learn more and discover as we went.

01:07:05:01 – 01:07:15:07
Unknown
So I think that was I thought it was just going to be making spectrometers. Honestly, I didn’t think we were going to do everything else that we ended up doing.

01:07:16:08 – 01:07:49:03
Unknown
Excellent. And Alexa, I think what surprised surprised me the most, was just, how much? You could do with the spectrometers and what kind of different experiments you can use them for, because there’s so much more even than what we did. I know one of the things I ended up doing was I collected a variety of leaves, and then I, left them on my desk for, like, a week.

01:07:49:04 – 01:08:16:03
Unknown
And then I compared the spectral measurements of when I first got them, and then a week later, which is really cool, because then you get to see the drop in the infrared and then, the, absorption, absorption. And like, the blue and red, parts of the spectrum on the graph. And it was cool to physically see that just on something I left on my desk for a week.

01:08:16:04 – 01:08:37:07
Unknown
But even that, like when I went through the GitHub, some of the suggestions of different experiments, there’s so much that you can do and there’s so, so much you can learn. Just like with any spectrometer. Excellent. No. Good question. Did you, did you use a, any kind of white reference? Normalize your,

01:08:37:08 – 01:08:58:02
Unknown
Okay. What did you what did you all use? What was your. We had a we essentially took a piece of construction paper. And put it we taped it to a box, so that, when we were outside that it could just, sit on the grass. And then we, took calibration measurements from it.

The post Student Voices: Real Engineering Success with STELLA Instruments appeared first on STELLA.

Helio-STELLA: Bridging Space Science and Education

Michael Taylor — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 02:52:33 +0000

Helio-STELLA: Bridging Space Science and Education

Video Summary

“One of the biggest things that I think is the benefit to this tool is that it provides that conduit to give a kid the ability to easily add something to it or think of something themselves to do.”

Project Origins and Field Testing

The Helio-STELLA project represents an innovative approach to making heliophysics accessible in educational settings. During the April 2024 total solar eclipse, Dr. Gerald Knezek and his team field-tested an early prototype in Flower Mound, Texas. This early testing successfully demonstrated that UV radiation drops significantly during a total eclipse, providing valuable data while also validating the instrument’s capabilities.

The testing process wasn’t without challenges. When the team’s Surface Pro began overheating during data collection, they demonstrated NASA-worthy problem-solving by creating an improvised cooling system using an upside-down basket with a fan—a solution Dr. Knezek compared to the resourcefulness shown during the Apollo 13 mission.

Educational Applications

Dr. Knezek, with his extensive experience in education at the University of North Texas (UNT), has integrated Helio-STELLA into teacher preparation programs. Pre-service teachers participate in technology generation classes where they can learn to use this innovative solar monitoring technology.

Dr. Fred McMahan, an assistant professor in learning technologies with a focus on next-generation tech development, brings his expertise to help ensure Helio-STELLA meets the needs of future classrooms. His background in preparing students for emerging technologies makes him ideally suited to bridge the gap between advanced heliophysics concepts and practical classroom applications.

Together, Dr. Knezek and Dr. McMahan have demonstrated how Helio-STELLA transforms passive learning into active investigation. The educational value extends beyond solar science to include engineering principles, data analysis, and computational thinking—all critical skills for future STEM professionals.

Technical Evolution and Future Vision

Dr. McMahan envisions significant technical enhancements for Helio-STELLA, particularly adding Wi-Fi capabilities that would enable real-time data transmission to students’ devices. This would allow an entire classroom to observe solar measurements simultaneously, rather than taking turns with a single device or having to manually transfer data from an SD card.

Dr. Knezek shared a broader vision for public engagement, suggesting that Helio-STELLA readings could eventually be incorporated into weather forecasts, similar to how UV index information is now standard. He specifically mentioned the potential value during solar storms, connecting classroom science to real-world space weather events that affect communications and other systems.

Addressing Educational Barriers

Both educators recognize the significant time constraints faced by teachers. They emphasize that successful technology adoption in education requires minimizing the learning curve for busy educators while maximizing educational impact for students. Their approach focuses on creating clear documentation, accessible designs, and simple operational procedures.

This practical perspective reflects Dr. Knezek’s extensive experience working with teachers, including many who have been collaborating with their programs for many years. This long-term relationship has provided valuable insights into the real-world challenges of technology integration in educational settings.

Space-to-Classroom Connection

The team’s work with Helio-STELLA demonstrates the instrument’s ability to capture meaningful space weather data. For example, during the May 10th solar storm, Dr. Knezek’s son alerted him at 3am from Seattle about the event, prompting him to set up his Helio-STELLA unit on a picnic table to collect data. The resulting measurements showed significant disturbances that aligned with official NOAA data but revealed more detailed local variations.

The collaboration between Dr. Knezek and Dr. McMahan exemplifies how NASA-inspired technology can be adapted for educational purposes. Their work with Helio-STELLA is helping transform how solar science is taught, making it more engaging, accessible, and connected to real-world phenomena—potentially inspiring a new generation of space scientists and engineers

Transcript

00:00:08:13 – 00:00:25:06
Unknown
I’m here with, Gerald Knezek. Is that how you pronounce it? And as it gets pretty close. Oh, okay. Fantastic. And, Fred, I don’t know what because your last name is up here, but if you’re not careful. Yeah. Fred McMahan, Fred McMahan hand.

00:00:25:06 – 00:00:38:10
Unknown
Fred MacMahan and Gerald Knezek. Okay. All right. And so, I guess we’ll start with Gerald. Can you give me your background, please? And just, you know, some information about who you are?

00:00:38:10 – 00:00:49:09
Unknown
Sure. What do you think, Gerald Knezek here? I’m in my 41st year at unity. I’m a recent professor of learning technologies.

00:00:49:10 – 00:01:18:13
Unknown
I work a lot with STEM education and initiatives. And so that’s how we, got involved with, NASA starting in 2015 or 16 and, have been there ever since. Awesome, awesome. Okay. And Fred. Yeah. So I’m an assistant professor and learning technologies. And and I haven’t been here quite as long as Gerald, but, hopefully I’ll be an associate professor next year.

00:01:18:14 – 00:01:43:08
Unknown
And then, my main area background is actually rightly… lately and a lot of development of next generation tech. And so we’re really focused on what’s going to be coming down the road ten years from now. You know, that we can prepare our students for and actually just preparing the world for it as well. That kind of makes sense.

00:01:43:10 – 00:01:54:05
Unknown
So, because the we are moving at a light speed pace now with technology and we have to try to stay ahead of it too.

00:01:57:14 – 00:02:23:04
Unknown
and I’ll say Pat Haas and Carolyn Ng did a wonderful job presenting that this was at site, and again Elana I’ve, had a 29 year history with the society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. And so they’re the ones that teach technology techniques to the future teachers. And, and so this was, a presentation there, and it was well received, I think.

00:02:23:05 – 00:02:42:13
Unknown
I’m not sure how many of you were there in the cotton Bowl in Dallas or the Arboretum, but quite a few of your group and and they were tried out. Ours was not actually put together yet. Pat just gave me, our kit the next day, and so I’ll get to that in a moment. But there were several of these.

00:02:42:13 – 00:03:02:06
Unknown
Try it out. And I was always amazed. I wish I could make my graphs look like these two that, I think maybe, maybe. Paul, you made that graph. I’m not sure, but ours lines up quite nicely. And of course, we had lots of different locations. You can see in the picture with Pat, this was the, the day before.

00:03:02:06 – 00:03:06:01
Unknown
It was Saturday before the Monday eclipse. And Fred was there, too.

00:03:06:01 – 00:03:17:14
Unknown
middle school teachers in the picture that came from, neighborhood schools. Most of them have been with us for 15 years also. So the theme you’ll find is we’re kind of in it for the long haul.

00:03:17:15 – 00:03:24:10
Unknown
And, I’m hoping that, What? I’m so glad Fred is here. My long haul might not be too many more years, but

00:03:24:10 – 00:03:34:02
Unknown
I think he’s got quite a few. It, And I think this was, Pat Haas measure of the UVA and several of the things that, changed during the eclipse. And I’m

00:03:34:02 – 00:03:35:13
Unknown
sure you’ve all seen this picture and the

00:03:35:13 – 00:03:36:08
Unknown
explanations.

00:03:36:09 – 00:04:05:15
Unknown
This was from from our, our instrument. That was, let’s see, this is. Yeah, this is about May the 11th, actually, on May the 10th, the what happened? And I had no idea. I wasn’t watching things, but this picture was sent at 3 a.m. from Seattle by my son. He was at May the 10th. He was outside and said, hey, dad, I think you’re you’re going to have, time to turn your meter on.

00:04:05:15 – 00:04:24:14
Unknown
My wife had a craft fair eight hours the next day in Farmham. So I took, literally our black version of this meter, just set it on the picnic table and turned it on. That run for seven hours. And that’s where these graphs came from. I didn’t know it was going to kind of blow the top out.

00:04:24:14 – 00:04:45:09
Unknown
And, and the other Pat from, used to be from NASA headquarters. I forgotten his last name. He was in, Alaska with us. He was most impressed with this picture, the one that I don’t know if you can see the screen, the black lines, because we tried to, we we did. Careful.

00:04:45:09 – 00:04:52:12
Unknown
Well, I will say, Paul, Paul just graduated in computer science, so he’s like Fred’s understudy in some ways, but.

00:04:52:15 – 00:05:22:00
Unknown
So his Python code is magical. And I said, hey, can you overlay what we we saw on top of that? I think it’s a DST index there. And so really what happens locally is much more zigzag than what you see on the smooth curve. The red line is from Noah, and the black line is what I recorded that day, from the picnic table with with the STELLA instrument pointing straight up and just running.

00:05:22:02 – 00:05:27:13
Unknown
And so I think there’s a lot of local variation, probably everywhere, but probably you already knew that.

00:05:27:13 – 00:05:47:08
Unknown
But I was a little surprised also, we we converted to KP, and, Paul will kill me now, but I found that that, through our area chat bots and said, hey, if you just divide all the, all the total, color spectrum irradiance by two, it’ll be pretty close.

00:05:47:10 – 00:06:08:11
Unknown
And so that’s what we use, and it turns out it lines up. So when you sum whatever came out of the, the Helio-STELLA, on the color spectrums and then divide it by two, that’s this line. And, for whatever reason, Paul, I’m sure you will tell me. It makes no sense at all. It kind of lines up quite well.

00:06:08:11 – 00:06:14:00
Unknown
So that’s the the limit of my, prediction science. In any

00:06:14:00 – 00:06:33:09
Unknown
case, as I mentioned in the beginning, we’re really interested in this whole sunburn thing. It became popular in all of our schools since Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer. And it wasn’t the students who knew who it was until their teachers came and said, hey, you guys better put on sunscreen when you’re, out in the sun.

00:06:33:09 – 00:06:39:07
Unknown
And again, places like Hawaii or Florida caught, all of Texas. It’s very

00:06:39:07 – 00:06:59:03
Unknown
important. This was our version of the UVA. So you probably never heard of Roger Wagner, but he’s been a colleague for 40 years. He was a hyper studio creator, and now he does, Arduino kits and stuff. And so he made me a famous Roger pizza box with a UV meter.

00:06:59:03 – 00:07:25:01
Unknown
And my son, that’s Microsoft computer engineer, hooked it up to his Surface Pro in my yard in Flower Mound and recorded all day long while we were at the arboretum. So this is where I tell people we kind of, prove that you can’t get sunburned during a total eclipse. And, that’s the. Yeah, maybe that’s obvious, but anyway, this is comparable to what comes out of the Helio-STELLA.

00:07:25:01 – 00:07:33:13
Unknown
But it was actually a pizza box, running to a Arduino that was feeding a live feed into, storage on, Microsoft Surface Pro.

00:07:33:13 – 00:07:45:11
Unknown
I think there’s a picture. Maybe. Let’s see if I can find that. Nope. I’m going backwards. Oh, no, I’m I’m not. It’s not there. But we have that somewhere alright. The big crisis was.

00:07:45:11 – 00:08:07:06
Unknown
The Surface Pro got too hot, so my my son had to bring a fan outside, and he turned upside down. Closed basket and, made a cooling fan out of it and some crisis. So. Sounds a little bit like Apollo 13, I guess. There. Okay. Implications for teacher education. This is where I think there really is a future.

00:08:07:06 – 00:08:07:08
Unknown
And

00:08:07:08 – 00:08:27:05
Unknown
This is your forte. We know now that not just Fred and I, but there are a bunch of people all around us, teachers in particular, and also pre-service teachers that we teach the technology generation class for all 400 pre-service candidates that graduate from you UNT each year.

00:08:27:06 – 00:08:48:11
Unknown
And so that’s a service course for our department. And we’d love to incorporate a component in that connected with our lab. But remote sensing instrumentation and all of those kinds of things, PBL that’s also in, Fred’s, neck of the woods. And this was the summary that,

00:08:48:11 – 00:08:51:14
Unknown
I believe Pat gave at that presentation.

00:08:51:14 – 00:09:17:14
Unknown
And I agree with all that. I think you’ve all heard it’s hand held as part of pointed out. You can hang it on the wall. It’s easy to assemble. Probably even I could do it. The spectrometer is amazing. I’m amazed at how much it lines up like right now. I was recording two hours earlier. We have a lot of KP 4.5 right now going on, and so when it’s above four I try to grab it, but there are three hours behind.

00:09:17:15 – 00:09:37:07
Unknown
And and Paul, this is a compliment to you. I just started looking at the some of the STELLA right answers and go, oh, it’s going up and, it’s so I keep it running. Otherwise, as Fred points out, sometimes when it gets above 110 in Texas, it still melts the case. So we have to worry a little bit about that.

00:09:37:07 – 00:09:46:12
Unknown
But, but the instruments work quite well. Well into presentation. Thank you. I hope it wasn’t too fast or too scattered

00:09:50:10 – 00:10:05:02
Unknown
In your presentation, we saw STELLA being used at the Dallas Cotton Ball and, Dallas Arboretum, during the 2024 eclipse. Right. What, what unique data were you able to collect during these events that passed?

00:10:05:04 – 00:10:08:14
Unknown
Might not have been possible without, Helio. STELLA.

00:10:08:14 – 00:10:28:05
Unknown
Yeah, I know, just. What data did you collect specifically? Sure. I’ll review that, too. But before I forget, I wanted to show, I guess in the camera. The latest one. That’s, Fred’s creation, where he added a magnetometer. And I’m anxious to, carry this. I actually recorded some data earlier today.

00:10:28:05 – 00:11:03:09
Unknown
It’s only about a KP3 this afternoon, but, for trying to figure out how can we get a simple formula that middle school kids, would understand. That is as far as if they were out in the afternoon sun. Recording data and so far. Now, to get to your point, we still have good success with teachers and teachers to be an even parents and kids with giving them a set of binoculars where they can still see sunspots during the current cycle phase.

00:11:03:10 – 00:11:26:06
Unknown
And I always remind them, when my flight used to be diverted 11 years ago when we were flying a little bit more around the world, around the North Pole side, and it’s not so frequent anymore, but, occasionally it still happens. So how is it relevant to the real world? What do we find from the Cotton Ball and so forth?

00:11:26:06 – 00:11:48:04
Unknown
Is, we always have to wait at least 3 to 6 hours before we knew if there were solar storms coming or whatever, and it was usually after the fact. And, now we’ve learned since I was a former math major to sort of, look at the curve and see where it’s going and put our, our STELLA out when we think it’s going to be something exciting.

00:11:48:06 – 00:12:10:08
Unknown
Or as I think I mentioned when we last met, that, my son, at three in the morning for me, had texted me on May the 10th because he was, outside of Seattle camping and said, wow, look at these auroras. And so, since my wife had, a craft fair event all day the next day, I just said, are still out on the table.

00:12:10:08 – 00:12:41:05
Unknown
And that’s some of the best data we’ve ever gotten, including during the eclipse, over the years. And so, you just never know. But actually, instant, just in time. Like, we had a big storm here yesterday, but is no clouds at all today. So I stuck my STELLA out for an hour, and I, I’m anxious to get home and and put, the data in a spreadsheet and, see how it lines up with what the official people got.

00:12:41:06 – 00:13:04:03
Unknown
But I think I also might have mentioned to some of you, if you’ve been in, in the sessions before, what we really find is that our local K index just jumps around a lot compared to what we get from NOAA. And, and we think our data, the points are real. And so it gives me a whole new perspective.

00:13:04:03 – 00:13:44:08
Unknown
But a lot of people also like local variations might be very important sometimes. And I might have mentioned I’m not sure I even think that, especially on 90.1MHz, where I listen to the radio a lot when I’m driving in to work, about 30 minutes, if the static is so bad that I hardly can hear, we’re, almost 50 miles outside of Dallas that, if if it’s, I immediately go and, Google and see what the KP index is, and, and if it’s high, then I sticker still out and see what it really was.

00:13:44:09 – 00:14:14:09
Unknown
And so with that, I don’t know, maybe I’ll turn this over to Fred for a bit, because he was actually in the formal training the day before the eclipse or two days before that was, brought to us by, your colleagues at Goddard at NASA. So, Fred, I love it for you. And I think the biggest thing too that was found was, you know, there’s that myth that the UV shoots up right when you, during a solar eclipse.

00:14:14:11 – 00:14:38:05
Unknown
Right? So. Oh, it’s dangerous to be outside because the UV is is higher at that point. But the STELLA proved and showed that that wasn’t actually the case. Right. The UV just completely goes away. And we could see that in the Helio-STELLA and as far as education standpoint, I mean, teaching the color spectrums and understanding where the color light comes from, I think is very beneficial.

00:14:38:06 – 00:15:05:13
Unknown
And, you know, and doing that and adding the magnetometer hopes to add just a little bit more to that data. Right. To that. Well, what exactly is happening during these solar events that we’re getting? And how can we teach kids better ways to, understand that and protect our planet in that sense? So what we need to do.

00:15:09:10 – 00:15:15:15
Unknown
beyond eclipse observations and you already touched on this a bit, what are other heliophysics phenomena?

00:15:16:02 – 00:15:24:09
Unknown
And Helio-STELLA help students observe and understand that might otherwise be inaccessible and typical classroom settings.

00:15:24:09 – 00:15:49:10
Unknown
Well, I’ll start with one. I, for me, when we say eclipse, everyone thinks total eclipse. But the annular one, when I was sitting in San Antonio, to me it was almost as fascinating. Actually, your eyes adjust during an annular eclipse, and probably you knew that, but I didn’t.

00:15:49:11 – 00:16:20:03
Unknown
And so it was only the fact that. Wait a minute. It started out at 92 degrees, and then everyone got cold and we had to take blankets in in San Antonio, Texas, you know, take them outside on the deck. And so I was wondering, actually, I also had, a UV sensor, that was commercial that I was setting out to, to see if my eyes automatically adjusted until my brain that it was still total daylight.

00:16:20:05 – 00:17:00:06
Unknown
What did the measurements show? And so, I was only looking at the UV out of, of, that at the time, but had I had a, Helio-STELLA with me, this was October 2024, and we didn’t have it yet. I would have really had a systematic view. And so, I know that, eclipse again, but, there, if I could switch gears and then, also go to Fred, because if we really think, I think in my younger days, I used to do a lot more of, engineering design concepts in what we would call computational thinking.

00:17:00:07 – 00:17:25:14
Unknown
That is, what can you do with data that you could get from stuff that you’re not quick enough or can’t remember enough sets to do? And, and so, I don’t know, Fred, would you have ideas still ahead? Well, yeah. So besides what I said before, I think the other thing that I would point out is it teaches Stem better and engineering better specifically, like programing and things like that.

00:17:25:14 – 00:17:46:07
Unknown
So giving it to a kid and saying, what can you do with it and what could we tweak on it to make it do something that it didn’t do before? Right. So it’s giving you that that thinking about what making them critically think about what you can do with this. Right. Because they should be the ones coming up.

00:17:46:07 – 00:18:21:01
Unknown
We have ideas, but they should be the ones coming up with these new ideas and saying, oh, we should add a magnetometer to it so that we can see what’s happening and, you know, different positions and things like that. And so I think that’s probably for me, one of the biggest things that I think is the benefit to this tool is that it provides that conduit to give a kid the ability to easily add something to it or think of something themselves to do, and use that data in new ways that maybe you wouldn’t even to thought about in the past.

00:18:24:12 – 00:18:35:00
Unknown
and, the presentation identifies remote sensing, spectrum analysis, instrumentation and fabrication is key areas where Helio-STELLA supports teacher education, which is these areas.

00:18:35:00 – 00:18:53:04
Unknown
Have you found, teachers struggle with the most? And how does Helio Stella. Or as a Stella in general, help address these types of, challenges? And this could go to both you, Gerald inference or. Yeah.

00:18:53:04 – 00:19:05:14
Unknown
I think it’s that, accessibility to, the resources. Right. And clear instructions. So teachers are very busy people, right?

00:19:05:14 – 00:19:34:11
Unknown
They’re very overworked. And I think, you know, one of the benefits that we had was during the eclipse is, the heliophysics had come in and they were giving sessions to teachers to train them on these kind of tools. And I think it would be good, almost like if there was like in there may be already out there, but almost like a series where teachers could watch videos or watch these types of instrumentation to give them ideas.

00:19:34:15 – 00:19:56:01
Unknown
A lot of it, it’s just verbal documentation. It’s a lot of to read and and things like that. And I noticed there’s just quite a bit of change that happens on the website, and things kind of get shifted around and lost. And I think that would be a great benefit to them to make them more engaged too.

00:19:56:02 – 00:20:20:02
Unknown
You have to account for their time if they want you want them to use these tools. You have to make it viable for them to use it because they don’t have time to go spend hours upon hours learning these things. And it’s it’s more like a simplification. The documentation is very done very well, but I think that it still needs to be taken to another level to make it even easier for these teachers.

00:20:20:02 – 00:20:44:03
Unknown
Could I add 1 or 2 there? Oh yeah. Please. Oh yeah. There is. I would say that, if I could divide teachers or potential teachers into two groups. One is the In-Service teacher group, and they really only have time for some kind of quick make it, take it, you know, their, something where with a takeaway.

00:20:44:06 – 00:21:08:09
Unknown
So after third grade teachers has kids growing the implant. They need, very clearly documented, easy to use, easy to implement, system like Fred was mentioning, so that they could just come in and turn it on and have third graders, do it, and and it would be meaningful. I mean, the pictures on the screen, everybody now has projection capabilities.

00:21:08:12 – 00:21:49:06
Unknown
So that’s in-service teachers, where we also teach the, Technology Tools for educators course to all pre-service teachers that you. And that’ll be about 750 new ones each year. We usually catch them in their second year for our required course of technology integration. I wish that we would have every one of those pre-service teachers go through a lab Hands-On exercise, where they do some of the fabrication, my own children too, and maybe all three of them got their college research assistantships because they knew how to solder and use a pair of pliers and a screwdriver.

00:21:49:08 – 00:22:19:04
Unknown
It’s, unusual, especially for anyone who’s going to be a teacher these days. I mean, maybe they can use Google everything, but I, I asked them to fix the doorknob, and, it will, I won’t say impossible. They’re just never been exposed to that kind of stuff. But the next generation, I think, like Fred said, for we need STEM education everywhere, you know, STEM as a tool for solving the world’s problems.

00:22:19:05 – 00:22:46:11
Unknown
Is, really our root. And so there’s very little, hands on, touch it, kind of activities and, and even just popping these components together would, would be something that would be manageable in a three hour unit and then, require them to do a little micro project where they would do something in innovation, innovative, by the end of our, you know, simple three credit, our service course.

00:22:46:12 – 00:23:01:02
Unknown
That would be wonderful. In my opinion, a hands on lab activity where I across the hall from, engineering school at our university. They all have labs all the time. So why don’t we, for pre-service teachers

00:23:04:15 – 00:23:14:01
Unknown
Your problem your slides mentioned problem based learning PBL as a key. Pedagogical. That’s a fun to say, pedagogical approach with Helio-STELLA.

00:23:14:01 – 00:23:25:08
Unknown
Could you share a specific example of a successful PBL implementation that improve student outcomes or teacher confidence, say, with hopefully with your your style?

00:23:25:08 – 00:23:40:12
Unknown
Okay. Well, I guess I would to go back to the earlier STELLA example, when our, co-director of our center here where we’re sitting, doctor Christiansen was a former third grade teacher.

00:23:40:14 – 00:24:03:06
Unknown
And when Paul came, she said, wow, I used to have my kids grow up being plants. And, could we have them, test. It was STELLA, like, every week in the window or maybe even every day. And, and Paul just pulled it out and said, well, why don’t you try it? And so, she did. And that convinced us that, any teacher could actually do that.

00:24:03:10 – 00:24:26:00
Unknown
We didn’t actually have, have her grow a bean plant there, but we found various levels of plants and then pulled the SD card out and looked at them on the screen and could see that any teacher that was, not terribly afraid of touching, an SD card or knew how to use any kind of a spreadsheet program could do this.

00:24:26:04 – 00:24:29:02
Unknown
And so that was one example. Very early on.

00:24:29:02 – 00:24:56:02
Unknown
Yeah. And I think, probably Fred’s already mentioned this, but I know we’re so happy he’s here because of, I’ll call it the computational thinking aspect of it. This whole idea of you find a problem if you’re if you’re at all versed in PBL type learning, whether it’s a project or, or problem based learning and your vocabulary, I think there’s great potential for that.

00:24:56:02 – 00:25:24:14
Unknown
And, actually, you know, a lot of our faculty even are not schooled anymore in these techniques, and it’s something we’re really going to be in trouble for if we don’t convey it to the next generation. And that’s where I think that was one of the things I was just thinking about because, teaching kids critical thinking is now harder than ever before because we have these tools that don’t make you have to critically think.

00:25:25:00 – 00:25:56:10
Unknown
Right. ChatGPT things like this, you know, so kids can just go get the answer faster than they used to. Just Google it. Right. So when I was a kid and Google came out I was like oh I get the answer by googling it now it’s even faster. Right? And so you have to develop tools that the, tools to still teach critical thinking, sorry, tools to teach critically thinking that are, can’t be solved by ChatGPT, right?

00:25:56:10 – 00:26:23:02
Unknown
They can’t be done by these, generative AI systems like this. STELLA. Right. Putting your hands on this physical device, and you, you’re learning it. You’re actually getting the hands on experience and giving them the ability to critically think about it. Now, they could use those to help them understand a little bit better, but at the end of the day, they still have to put their hands on it, work with it, which makes it physical so that they can still develop those skills.

00:26:26:14 – 00:26:45:07
Unknown
Fantastic. All right. And then, so this also gets to the future of the Helio-STELLA as well. So looking forward, what enhancements or new applications for Helio Stella are you most excited about developing in the next say you know very well in the near future, say 1 or 3 years, possibly.

00:26:46:07 – 00:27:24:06
Unknown
Right. So I’m most interested in actually making, like, the data in real time on, like, a cell phone, so we could actually transmit it. So adding a Wi-Fi adapter, making it transmittable to devices in real time, because one of the the things that is, kind of missing right now is if you have a classroom with 30 students and you only have one of these devices, you know, sure, each one of them can get their turn to use these devices, but would be more interesting for them to be able to watch what’s happening in real time.

00:27:24:07 – 00:27:49:12
Unknown
Not necessarily just, you know, looking at the screen or pulling the SD card out, and then uploading the data. But if they could see it in real time. So my thought process was, well, let’s install a Wi-Fi adapter, and then we can just transmit the data, to a web page or an app on a phone, so that we could communicate, this and see things in real time, generate graphs in real time, right?

00:27:49:12 – 00:28:14:15
Unknown
Instead of having to take the Excel spreadsheet and plot the graph, we could just do it in real time and then maybe even some machine learning, you know, some on this data. You know, there’s some things that we can do with it. But hardware wise, you know, it’s just how much can we cram into this in, you know, make it awesome for kids to use and easy for teachers to use.

00:28:15:01 – 00:28:42:07
Unknown
And yeah, my dream is, similar but actually simpler than Fred’s. I, I remember when we didn’t have webcams and now on the 6:00 news or the 10:00 news especially, not only is there a UV index where they give it during the weather forecast, but they often if we have a stormy weather show, the webcam from the our football stadium and from several other universities in the Dallas-Fort worth metroplex.

00:28:42:08 – 00:29:16:05
Unknown
Why? What if we had, Fred’s kind of system and it fed into the 6:00 or the 10:00 news and they would switch over to the STELLA readings and, especially during time when some of your colleagues from NASA would, would say in advance that, hey, we’re predicting a solar storm. And, and so I think that the whole public kind of awareness of, of all of this is, prime the technology is here now, thanks to all of you guys, to make this something that the whole public could be aware of.

00:29:16:05 – 00:29:21:03
Unknown
And so maybe we would actually have first graders that go, oh, I want to come here because you have STELLA.

00:29:24:09 – 00:29:39:00
Unknown
having crazy ideas that are not practical at all while valuing teammates who make those ideas workable. Could you share an example of how this dynamic led to important innovation in the HHelio-STELLA project or STELLA projects?

00:29:41:05 – 00:30:10:12
Unknown
Yeah. It’s, I gotta think about that one. Great. Yeah. But, from my personal experience, I think it’s that I it is going to sound crazy, but, you know, when I first started looking into adding more sensors to it, I, I started going through the actual all the sensors you could get. Right? So you actually go through and you start looking at all these sensors, and this really starts populating ideas in your head like, oh, I can put this in here.

00:30:10:12 – 00:30:31:14
Unknown
Oh, I can add this. Oh, there’s like gesturing sensors where you can gesture. And maybe we could switch the button out to be like a gesture, like, you know, just because everybody’s used to that type of interface now. Right. And so I think that’s the biggest thing is it’s just the creativity that it allows you to have. Right.

00:30:31:15 – 00:30:48:13
Unknown
And you want to pass that on to everybody on the team. Right. So you get with somebody like, hey, we could do this. We have to figure this out. We have to figure that out. And then there’s a lot of potential for it. Right. So you want to pass that on to teachers, and you also want to pass it on to kids because that gets them interesting.

00:30:48:13 – 00:31:08:03
Unknown
Right. As we’ve been talking. Right, as you said, nerding out about this, that’s what makes it enjoyable. And if you enjoy something, you’re going to want to spend more time. Do it and you’re going to learn more about it. And doing that kind of stuff helps kids learn better, in my opinion. And so I think that’s probably that.

00:31:08:04 – 00:31:28:12
Unknown
The biggest thing about it is just having that open source kind of concept where you could say, oh, we could do this and think outside the box and, and change it in and do it, and that makes it better in my opinion. No. Yeah. And maybe, I’d like to go back to ancient history just for a minute.

00:31:28:13 – 00:31:58:02
Unknown
And 1977, I was a new graduate student at the University of Hawaii and, I, found out that they had the system called PEACESAT, Pan Pacific Education and Communications Experiments by Satellite. It was at year one based to begin with, after it finished its mission. And by the way, my first trip to Goddard ever was to see the replica of the ATS-1 that they still had there.

00:31:58:05 – 00:32:31:01
This was in the early 80s at the time, Application Technology Satellite 1 It was the first one to send faxes. It was, high frequency. I’m an amateur radio operator. So for me, this was second nature, sort of, I think, 149MHz up and 135 down, if I remember correctly. So it was a push to talk, however, microcomputers that just come out the Apple two, I remember we had a but a half dozen or so that came in 1978 and they couldn’t talk over ATS-1.

00:32:31:02 – 00:33:01:13
The, the station’s the headquarters were Honolulu and New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand for ATS-1. And at the time it was only the only way during certain times of the year of the people at the South Pole could communicate because the, the, the currently available satellite network wasn’t that, prominent. They were mostly geostationary orbit around the equator or, more or less.

00:33:01:13 – 00:33:40:03
And so depending on the tilt, couldn’t reach the South Pole. And, but what we used to talk about dream about especially a colleague who was in, Fiji and one in American Samoa. So, they were saying, well, can’t we get these apple tubes to send stuff over ATS-1? And, so someone figured out if we shorted out the CR1 diode and, and the and the 300 baud modem, that it would trick the computer, and actually, you could send even without the return circuit that was required.

00:33:40:04 – 00:34:00:05
And, and the standards for modem communications, that’s kind of what I used to teach the network operating systems. So you have to send and then also have a receipt and verify the data in our current protocols. But you can’t do that in a push-to-talk one way at a time. CB radio kind of satellite.

00:34:00:06 – 00:34:30:05
So we had fun for more than fun, actually. We started sending lots of, interesting and valuable data. And eventually when I first came to Unty, we found out by the end it was, 83. That was parked over Easter Island, as I recall it, and it would reach Texas. So we actually built a, satellite relay on our roof and our education building and, for 2 or 3 years talked on that.

00:34:30:05 – 00:34:54:15
And many school districts, actually, in our area, especially rural ones, they actually, installed their own dishes just so they could talk to people, like in Hawaii and New Zealand and, and, and so when I first saw STELLA I had sort of flashbacks back to it’s one like, wow, this is satellite technology I never dreamed about.

00:34:55:00 – 00:35:06:07
Now it’s in my hand. And so, well, that’s just the beginning of the story, but maybe it gives you the idea. I think the the potential is just unlimited.

The post Helio-STELLA: Bridging Space Science and Education appeared first on STELLA.

From Environmental Science Student to STELLA Innovator: Bianca’s Journey

Michael Taylor — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 03:59:43 +0000

From Environmental Science Student to STELLA Innovator: Bianca's Journey

Video Summary

“Because it’s a low cost instrument, I feel comfortable messing with different sensors and trying to build my own version of STELLA with different codes and different parameters.”

A Serendipitous Meeting with Innovation

Bianca Cilento’s path to becoming a STELLA advocate began with a simple desire to build her own spectrometer. As an environmental science student pursuing a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree program, she had discovered her passion for interdisciplinary approaches to scientific problems during an internship in Sweden. There, she worked with plant compositions using a pseudo spectrometer called the Colorsnap tool, combining remote sensing with ecology to study changing Arctic landscapes.

“I was really excited about this project and thought, this is great – I’m going to get my masters and get a PhD and make my own spectrometer that works a little bit better, looks at near infrared,” Bianca recalls. But fate had other plans. When she met Mike Taylor and was introduced to STELLA, she realized she had found “everything I wanted to build and more.”

This discovery transformed her master’s thesis into “Quantifying Landscape Change using different spectrometers and imagery,” allowing her to compare different tools, collection methods, and mapping techniques. The project perfectly matched her love of looking at problems from multiple angles using interdisciplinary thinking.

Overcoming Initial Intimidation

Despite STELLA’s reputation for accessibility, Bianca’s first encounter with the device was daunting. “Honestly, I was a little overwhelmed. I did not have a very strong coding or manufacturing background, so I was a little scared at first,” she admits. The solution came from an unexpected source – her older brother helped her build her first STELLA.

But the initial fear quickly gave way to appreciation. “It actually was not as bad as I was expecting. It was really easy to put together and use,” Bianca discovered. Even when she encountered problems in the field due to her own mistakes, the troubleshooting process became part of the learning experience rather than a barrier to success.

This experience opened her eyes to STELLA’s potential for other early career scientists and researchers who might not have access to high-cost spectrometers – a realization that would shape her ongoing work with the platform.

Transcript

Could you please tell us,

tell me about your educational background and your current role?

Yeah, definitely.

So I started my degrees or my education back at right.

I started in 2019.

I was enrolled in the environmental science,

bachelor’s program, and about three years.

And to that, I was enrolled in the BSMS program.

So bachelors.

Masters, and I kind of had a hone down and pick a project that,

that I was going to do my thesis on.

And I’ve always been somebody who has like to do,

like to look at projects and problems,

from a lot of different angles and use a very interdisciplinary

ways of thinking to approach things.

So I ended up going to Sweden on an internship

or on a, like a stipend position, through a program called Emerge

that allowed me to look at, plant compositions

and how those are changing using a pseudo spectrometer called the Colorsnap tool.

And I was like, this is great.

I can use, you know, a little bit of remote sensing, a little bit of ecology.

And I can look at how Arctic landscapes are changing over time.

And I was really excited about this project and I was like, this is great.

I’m going to actually get my masters and get a PhD, which I did not do.

And make my own spectrometer that works a little bit better.

Looks at near infrared.

And then I met you and you introduced me to the STELLA,

which was everything I wanted to build and more.

And I incorporated that into my masters.

So my the title of my thesis ended up being Quantifying Landscape

Change using different spectrometers anyway, as imagery.

Yeah.

And so we were able to compare different tools and different

collection methods, different mapping methods,

even different

like GIS systems to

quantify how landscapes were changing over time.

And so that’s kind of what led me to where I am.

I’m working at EagleView right now.

It’s a aerial imagery company based out of, Rochester, New York.

And so I do a lot of the image processing stuff on that side.

But I’m also still working with Paul to kind of see how this fellow works

as a spectrometer and where its value as, like a science tool is.

So I’m testing it, compared to different spectrometers compared to

like its consistency over time, a whole bunch of different, parameters.

So I’m really excited about that.

What was your first impression when you started working with STELLA devices?

Honestly, I was a little overwhelmed.

I did not have a very strong coding

or manufacturing background, so I was a little scared at first.

I actually had my older brother help me do it, or help me build it.

But it actually was not as bad as I was expecting.

It was really easy to put together in use, and I did a little bit

of troubleshooting in the field because I messed a few things up.

But yeah, no, I had a really great time using it and

I think it can be really helpful to like a lot of early career

scientists, early career researchers who might not have access to,

high cost spectrometers.

Fantastic.

And that leads into the next question.

What career skills do you feel that STELLA has helped you develop?

Oh, gosh.

What hasn’t it helped me develop?

I feel I don’t know if I’d a confident programmer,

but I definitely am at least better than where I started.

I really think I’ve been able.

Look at what I like to look at and things from a lot of different

like perspectives and angles and different ways of thinking.

And I think that STELLA has really helped me do that

because there’s like the manufacturing angle and the machining angle

and the programing angle, and it can help

help solve so many problems, not even just environmental.

So yeah, I would say that it’s a very great tool.

It teaches a lot.

Whatever, whatever you want.

So STELLA can

What career skills do you feel STELLA has helped you develop?

Oh, gosh.

What what career skills hasn’t STELLA helped me develop?

I think, honestly, STELLA.

STELLA is what you make of it.

I’m somebody who was not a very confident programmer.

So being able to have the code

set up for me, I can really look into it and learn,

you know, what commands are helpful, where, how to modify.

I’ve been able to add a few different commands in there to make my research

easier.

Again, I’m not somebody who has very much technical experience.

So it’s really helpful that the build guide is there.

But there’s also options to, you know,

add your own sensors and add GPUs and anything that’s really helpful to you.

You can, you can mix and match.

So that’s been super helpful.

What transferable skills from solo work

do you see applying to other areas of your career?

Oh, that’s a great question.

I think that

using the STELLA has allowed me to see a project from start to finish.

So I’ve seen, you know, the development of different tools and,

you know, even, like the process of writing grants

to try to get more funding,

to pursue more research all the way down to data collection and data analysis.

So I think seeing

like a comprehensive project from start to finish

has really allowed me to hone in on things I like and things I don’t like.

Data collection specifically is a huge one, so

you only have a limited amount of time and a little limited amount of resources.

It’s really important to come up with a great data plan ahead of time.

So I think that’s something that’s really important that I’ve learned.

What skills did you develop

that you didn’t expect when you first started with STELLA?

Oh, I learned how to fail gracefully.

I would say I think that now, this isn’t specifically tied to STELLA,

but working with STELLA has given me the opportunity.

Because it’s a low cost instrument,

I feel comfortable messing with different sensors and trying to build

my own version of STELLA with different codes and different, I guess, parameters.

So, for example, I was trying to write a code in STELLA

that will, run through all the different gain and integration time combinations

so I don’t have to change it every time I run, every time I turn on the STELLA.

I just wanted one to turn it on once, and it’ll run continuously

and just cycle through.

And it was really hard.

I did not expect,

and I didn’t expect how many

times I’d have to, like, try something, test the code.

It didn’t work.

Try it again.

So it really taught me how to just

be patient.

And it’s okay that it doesn’t work the first few times.

And it’s.

It’s okay.

I can fail gracefully and then still sexy later on.

What’s been the most challenging skill to master?

And how did you overcome that challenge?

Was it the programing you were just mentioned?

Yeah, that’s definitely a big one.

Was the programing.

I am very, very little experience and the experience

I do have was hard, hard to even obtain.

Yeah, I would say the programing, but working with Paul

has definitely helped a lot.

He’s been a great coach to kind of gently

guide me without just giving me the answer on how to program things.

And like I

said, seeing the code, like in front of the working code in front of

you with like, already annotated with which steps do what.

That’s been super helpful too.

So I know, like, oh, if I want to mess with the gain

or the integration time, it’s right there in the code.

So I can kind of just take a bite sized piece and not have to

start from scratch if I want to edit it at all.

what motivated you to focus,

specifically on,

developing, these, these protocols for.

So and what are they?

So I’ve been working with Paul

to do sort of a classroom calibration protocol.

And that’s something that I wish I had learned a little bit

more of while I was doing my thesis.

I think it would have given my measurement a little bit more credibility.

So I think that’s something that

if we can teach it earlier on with something like the STELLA,

I think that that’s something that can advance science further.

I think my measurements that I took with STELLA were great and valuable,

but I also think that they could have

been helped if I had done a few measurements first, especially

because I was testing, in a very uncertain environment

like the outdoors, with different light levels and different times of day.

So having controls,

such as like seeing how

the STELLA reacts in different light levels in different

environments can help give.

A more consistent data

set and that can be easier can be compared

to different data sets year over year, different times a lot easier.

So I think that’s where that motivation really came.

And also just to see how the STELLA performs.

It’s still a relatively new instrument.

So having different people test different things and seeing if, you know, seeing.

So the STELLA is still a relatively new instrument.

So having lots of different groups of people testing

similar parameters under different environments kind of gives us a sense

of how reliable the STELLA is as a science tool,

rather just an educational tool.

Okay.

So what are some key considerations when designing your protocols?

That, so that other folks can follow it

independently?

So when designing a protocol, it’s

really important to make sure that it’s clear

and detailed while still being concise.

So there’s some steps that are a little bit implied

that you don’t necessarily need to repeat.

That just bogs things down and makes people probably overwhelmed.

Looking at a 20 step protocol.

But it’s also really important to make sure that the steps are repeatable.

So anything that could change the variability

or that could change the setup at all needs to be mentioned.

So if I say, for example,

I’m taking measurements of room darkness, I think it’s important

to make sure to mention how I darken the room.

So like the lights need to be off, curtains

need to be up.

You know, no light sources

so that it’s repeatable for other people.

So, yeah.

So you’re developing a classroom, calibration protocols.

Now, how do you balance say scientific accuracy

with classroom practicality in your protocols?

So a lot of the, constraints in the classroom

are those similar to those I’ve seen as an early career researcher.

So, low cost that

not a lot of time and, honestly, like, cramped space.

So when I’m designing it, I’m doing everything in my apartment,

my one bedroom apartment, to try to make sure that this is repeatable by kids.

This is repeatable.

Low budget.

And this is repeatable under time constraints.

So every

section of the protocol, every section of the calibration that I’m setting up,

I’m practicing it in my apartment to try to understand how,

what materials I can kind of scrounge together,

to make it, you know, low cost

and to make sure that

it can be done on time constraint and make sure there’s enough repeatability

where that can account for any uncertainty.

So it’s really I’m practicing it before I’m writing the protocol.

So I’m going through lots of different trials, lots of different experiments

before I really make sure I get it right.

So, speaking of which,

what calibration materials have you experimented with thus far?

This is a great question because it’s been a ton.

Most recently, the one that comes to my mind is Paul

and I are trying to see, reflector reliability as we’re calling it.

So we are trying to test styrofoam capability,

land version capability as, a reliable reflector.

So we want to see.

So let me back up.

We want.

So a good reflector will reflect light

equally from any incoming angle.

So we want to see is regular regular styrofoam

that anybody can get their hands on.

A good way to do that.

So we wanted to test the,

irradiance we’re getting from all these different angles.

So I have my nightstand set up to be at the right height.

I have a lazy Susan on top of it.

And then I have the styrofoam, crosshatch.

So I know where the center is with a protractor on top, so I know the angle.

And then I have floss tied to it

so I can actually turn it to get the angles that I need.

So that has been honestly probably the best way I found to do that.

In general, I also have it’s like a selfie stand

kind of, or like a tripod for photos that I use to keep the STELLA up.

Paul has a great 3D

printed part that holds the STELLA, and it just clicks right in.

And then I have an art easel that I wasn’t using at the time, so I just

that’s how I keep my target up.

That’s awesome.

Were there any other, materials that you’ve tried so far?

Other material, like in terms of reflectors or just like tools?

Reflectors? Yeah.

I have my tools.

Anything else that you found that works?

Yeah.

I have a white reference from,

I can’t remember the name of the photo studio,

but just like a local one in Atlanta that I’ve been using.

I don’t know the results off the top of my head,

but I have a bunch of different things I plan on doing.

But that’s all I have actually done is just give me a name.

Some of the other calibration mediums you plan on using.

Yes. I know we’ve talked about different types of paper,

so like construction paper specifically because it has more texture to it.

We’ve talked about a whiteboard and even just like a mirror

just to see what we’re looking at.

So those are some some things

that we might see upcoming.

Okay.

Yeah.

So what improvements or refinements are you still working on for your protocols?

That’s another great question.

There’s definitely a few methods that I.

I’m having a hard time,

I guess, nailing down.

But those are probably the more detailed ones where I

actually don’t know.

I actually kind of like my protocols.

Let me start over.

So it’s part of the classroom calibration.

We’re creating different protocols to really calibrate, the STELLA.

And so there’s a lot of different ways you can calibrate it.

You can see how it reacts in different temperatures and different light levels

with, different targets, you know, at different incident angles.

So one thing that’s really hard to balance

is how many different protocols or how many different parameters do

we need to test for this to be comprehensive?

So that’s probably

something that we’re working on refining right now.

I would say the biggest, most important things were working.

The most important ones to include, are definitely accounting

for light and then, having a good reflector.

So those are the two biggest, but also, how many can we supplement

to really have a comprehensive analysis while we’re still under these constraints?

We’ve talked about like budget in time and uncertainty levels

and repeatability.

Where do you see this work heading next?

Any exciting developments on the horizon?

In a perfect world,

I think that a paper is on the horizon.

I think,

Paul and I are working really hard to to,

you know, test all these calibration methods and see

how, you know, consistent the STELLA is across

all these different parameters we’ve talked about.

So I think once we hone down on what specific parameters

we need to include and we can get the data analyzed,

I think we might have an exciting paper in the works.

Who knows?

Yeah.

No measuring extraneous light.

Tell me about it. What is it?

so extraneous.

Light is, light in a completely dark room that we just kind of can’t get rid of.

So all the windows are down, all the curtains are up,

all the lights are off.

But there’s still

there’s still light coming from somewhere because we don’t live in a vacuum.

So that’s something to account for because it can be different

at different points of the day, different days of the week,

different seasons of the year.

So one way we do that is by saturating the lens.

So we max out, gain an integration time and a completely dark room.

And we see how much of this extraneous light we’re seeing.

And we measure that across different conditions.

And if it’s consistent, we can account for it. And,

we can account for it at once

and just kind of do some subtraction.

But if it’s not, there’s different ways we can account for it individually.

So it’s something you can

So you can measure extraneous light at the start of your measurements.

And see if it’s something

that needs to be accounted for or if it’s something that can be

that’s just negligible because of the small amount

compared to the other measurements you’re taking.

what has you most excited about STELLA?

My favorite thing about STELLA is

how easy it is for anybody to access it.

It’s available for students, researchers, teachers, professors.

It’s a great way for anybody to get involved in science.

You know,

I think there’s potential for environmental stuff, but

there’s also capabilities for engineering and machining and programing.

And any teacher who wants to get involved and implement it into their classroom,

there’s a way to do it.

Any sort of math, any sort of science, any sort of

Stem field.

There’s the opportunity for it.

And I think having something so hands on in a real world

application is what will get kids and people excited about science,

and that’s what we need.

I guess one thing that I think is really cool

is that everybody I talk to is really interested.

Like, my mom works in a school, so all the different teachers

I talk to are like, wow, tell me more about this tool.

So it’s really cool to say, like,

yeah, I’m I’m actually pretty comfortable with it, you know?

I know it really well.

Or I can explain it to people and give a demonstration and,

you know, do a quick data analysis right in front of them to show

the difference between different plants and asphalt and concrete.

So I would say that’s pretty cool, everybody.

I think once it’s out there, people will

like once people know about it, I think they’re really excited about it.

And that’s something that’s really cool to be a part of.

“I think it can be really helpful to like a lot of early career scientists, early career researchers who might not have access to high cost spectrometers.”

A Tool That Grows With You

What makes STELLA particularly powerful, according to Bianca, is its adaptability. “STELLA is what you make of it,” she explains. As someone who wasn’t a confident programmer, she found the pre-written code accessible while still offering opportunities for customization. “Being able to have the code set up for me, I can really look into it and learn what commands are helpful, where, how to modify.”

The platform’s modularity proved essential to her research. She could add different sensors, incorporate GPS capabilities, and mix and match components based on her specific needs. This flexibility allowed her to enhance her programming skills incrementally, adding commands to make her research easier without being overwhelmed by starting from scratch.

Learning to Fail Forward

Perhaps the most unexpected skill Bianca developed was what she calls “failing gracefully.” This lesson came while attempting to write code that would automatically cycle through different gain and integration time combinations, eliminating the need to manually adjust settings each time she turned on STELLA.

“It was really hard. I didn’t expect how many times I’d have to try something, test the code – it didn’t work, try it again,” she reflects. “It really taught me how to just be patient. It’s okay that it doesn’t work the first few times.” This experience with iterative problem-solving became invaluable preparation for professional research environments where persistence and patience are essential.

The low cost of STELLA made this experimentation possible. “Because it’s a low cost instrument, I feel comfortable messing with different sensors and trying to build my own version of STELLA with different codes and different parameters,” Bianca notes. This comfort with experimentation, enabled by affordability, became a crucial part of her learning process.

From User to Developer

After completing her master’s degree, Bianca joined EagleView, an aerial imagery company in Rochester, New York, where she applies her image processing skills professionally. But her relationship with STELLA didn’t end with graduation. Instead, she began collaborating with Paul Mirel and Mike Taylor to evaluate STELLA’s potential as a serious scientific instrument, testing its consistency over time and comparing it against other spectrometers.

This work led to an important realization: while her STELLA measurements were “great and valuable,” they could have been enhanced with better calibration protocols. “I think it would have given my measurements a little bit more credibility,” she reflects. This insight sparked her current focus on developing classroom calibration protocols that could advance science education and research.

Bringing Science to Everyday Spaces

Bianca’s approach to protocol development reflects her commitment to accessibility. She designs and tests everything in her one-bedroom apartment, ensuring that procedures can be replicated by students with limited space, time, and budgets. “I’m practicing it in my apartment to try to understand what materials I can kind of scrounge together to make it low cost and to make sure that it can be done under time constraints,” she explains.

Her creative solutions demonstrate the ingenuity that STELLA encourages. For testing reflector reliability, she uses a nightstand adjusted to the right height, a lazy Susan for rotation, styrofoam crosshatched to identify the center, a protractor for angle measurement, and dental floss for manual rotation. A selfie stand holds the STELLA, while an unused art easel supports targets.

This DIY approach isn’t just about cost savings – it’s about proving that quality science can happen anywhere, with materials anyone can access.

The Science of Calibration

Bianca’s calibration work addresses a fundamental challenge in scientific measurement: how do you ensure your instrument is giving you accurate, comparable data? Her protocols tackle multiple variables that can affect STELLA’s performance, from different light levels and temperatures to various target materials and incident angles.

One particularly important aspect is measuring “extraneous light” – the unavoidable illumination present even in seemingly dark rooms. “All the windows are down, all the curtains are up, all the lights are off, but there’s still light coming from somewhere because we don’t live in a vacuum,” she explains. By saturating the sensor and measuring this background light under different conditions, researchers can account for it in their data analysis.

Her work with reflector materials has tested everything from basic styrofoam to professional white references from photo studios, with plans to evaluate construction paper, whiteboards, and mirrors. Each material offers different advantages in terms of cost, availability, and optical properties.

Balancing Rigor with Practicality

Creating protocols that maintain scientific accuracy while remaining classroom-friendly requires careful balance. Bianca’s approach emphasizes clarity and repeatability while avoiding overwhelming detail. “It’s really important to make sure that it’s clear and detailed while still being concise,” she notes. “There’s some steps that are a little bit implied that you don’t necessarily need to repeat – that just bogs things down.”

The key is identifying which variables truly matter for reproducible results. When describing room darkness measurements, for example, she specifies that lights must be off and curtains must be closed – details that might seem obvious but are crucial for consistent results across different users and environments.

A Vision for Broader Impact

Bianca’s excitement about STELLA extends far beyond her own research. Working now at EagleView while continuing her STELLA research, she sees the instrument’s potential to democratize scientific access across multiple fields. “It’s available for students, researchers, teachers, professors. It’s a great way for anybody to get involved in science,” she enthuses.

Her mother’s work in schools has given her direct insight into educators’ reactions. “All the different teachers I talk to are like, ‘Wow, tell me more about this tool,'” she reports. Being able to demonstrate quick data analysis showing differences between plants, asphalt, and concrete creates immediate engagement and understanding.

Looking Toward the Future

The culmination of Bianca’s calibration work may be a research paper that establishes STELLA’s credibility as a scientific instrument rather than just an educational tool. “Paul and I are working really hard to test all these calibration methods and see how consistent the STELLA is across all these different parameters,” she explains.

This research addresses a crucial question for any emerging scientific instrument: How reliable is it? By having different groups test similar parameters under various environmental conditions, the scientific community can better understand STELLA’s capabilities and limitations.

The Ripple Effect of Accessibility

What excites Bianca most about STELLA is its potential to get people excited about science through hands-on, real-world applications. “I think having something so hands on in a real world application is what will get kids and people excited about science, and that’s what we need,” she reflects.

Her journey from intimidated student to confident developer illustrates STELLA’s power as both an educational tool and a research platform. By removing traditional barriers – high cost, complex programming requirements, need for specialized facilities – STELLA opens scientific exploration to anyone willing to learn and experiment.

A Model for Accessible Innovation

Bianca’s story demonstrates how accessible scientific tools can transform not just individual learning experiences, but entire approaches to research and education. Her work developing calibration protocols ensures that future STELLA users can achieve greater scientific rigor while maintaining the platform’s essential accessibility.

Her apartment-based testing protocols prove that quality science doesn’t require expensive laboratories or specialized facilities – just creativity, persistence, and the right tools. As she continues her professional work in aerial imagery while advancing STELLA’s scientific capabilities, Bianca exemplifies how accessible innovation can create pathways for the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Through her journey from overwhelmed student to confident researcher and protocol developer, Bianca has become living proof that STELLA’s promise of democratizing science education and research is not just aspirational – it’s achievable, measurable, and already happening.

The post From Environmental Science Student to STELLA Innovator: Bianca’s Journey appeared first on STELLA.

The Helio-STELLA Story: Engineering Innovation Meets Educational Access

Michael Taylor — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 03:18:37 +0000

The Helio-STELLA Story: Engineering Innovation Meets Educational Access

Video Summary

“It’s really showing you how scientific instruments work and the challenges to develop that are real.”

A Career Built on Resourcefulness

Pat’s journey to creating Helio-STELLA began decades before the instrument itself existed. Starting his NASA career in 1988 and joining Goddard Space Flight Center in 1989, Pat brought a unique perspective as an electronic instrumentation engineer specializing in the intricate world of micro circuits and transistors. His role evolved over the years from electronic engineer to instrument systems engineer, giving him hands-on experience across all aspects of instrument development – from initial conception through field recovery of sounding rocket payloads via helicopter.

Working directly with scientists rather than traditional engineering directorates, Pat learned to thrive in resource-constrained environments. “My dad and mom grew up in the depression, so I was taught that way,” he reflects. “I feel like that’s been my main contribution here at NASA – learning how to do things when you don’t have many resources.” This philosophy of creative problem-solving with limited budgets would prove essential to making scientific instruments accessible to educators and students.

The Meeting of Minds

The seeds of Helio-STELLA were planted through Pat’s involvement with the National Space Education Consortium (NSEC) and later the Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT). It was at Goddard’s annual “Goddard on the Green” event that fate intervened. Pat spotted someone wheeling a wagon full of STELLA instruments and immediately recognized both the familiar technology and its potential.

That someone was Mike Taylor who works with Paul Mirel, a brilliant engineer and software programmer whom Pat had previously worked with in the lab. “Paul was my mentor on several things,” Pat recalls. “Sometimes I got to teach him something he didn’t know, but mostly it was the other way around. Brilliant, innovative, resourceful gentleman.” Their reunion sparked an immediate collaboration, with Pat suggesting they create a heliophysics-focused version of STELLA in time for the approaching April 2024 total solar eclipse.

Together with Mike Taylor and education specialist Elana Resnick, the team had all the pieces needed to transform an educational concept into reality. Paul would handle the technical implementation, while Pat embraced his role as what Paul called the “application engineer” – though Pat prefers “salesman” for his enthusiastic promotion of the project.

The Science Behind the Instrument

Pat’s extensive background in heliophysics and imaging spectrographs provided the perfect foundation for Helio-STELLA’s development. Throughout his career, he had designed instruments that look beyond pretty pictures to capture the spectral data that reveals the true nature of celestial objects. “A picture is pretty, but it basically gives you two dimensions versus intensity,” he explains. “When you look at the spectra – spread it out into a rainbow – that’s really where most of the information is.”

This spectroscopic approach allows scientists to determine what stars are made of, how fast they’re moving, and their temperature. For Helio-STELLA, this meant creating an instrument that could demonstrate these same principles at ground level, making the invisible visible for students and educators. The decision to add UV detection capability was particularly inspired, as ultraviolet light from the sun affects everything from material degradation to human health, making it both scientifically relevant and personally relatable.

Engineering Elegance Through Simplification

One of Helio-STELLA’s greatest strengths came from what wasn’t invented. Rather than starting from scratch, the team leveraged the existing STELLA platform’s eight-channel spectrometer and white light measurement capabilities. “The majority of the instrument had already been developed. The software was developed, the instruments were integrated,” Pat notes. The main addition was a UV sensor, along with software modifications to create a streamlined, heliophysics-focused version.

This approach exemplified good engineering practice – leveraging previous work rather than reinventing the wheel. The primary challenge became time pressure to deliver before the eclipse, but Paul Mirel’s technical expertise made it happen “in record time.” The result was an instrument that cost less than $100 for all components, assuming users had a USB cable and micro SD card available.

Breaking Down Educational Barriers

The team’s collaboration with educators was informed by years of previous experience understanding their needs. Cost accessibility emerged as the paramount concern, and Pat’s excitement is palpable when describing teachers’ reactions to the instrument’s affordability: “When I told them how much it cost, their eyes lit up. Teachers today sometimes have to buy this stuff with their own money to get what they need in the classroom.”

At approximately $83 for all online components, Helio-STELLA represented a breakthrough in making real scientific instruments accessible to classrooms. But the impact went beyond mere affordability – the instrument offered educational value across an impressive range, from fifth grade through college level, adapting to different skill levels and learning objectives.

Hands-On Learning for the Real World

Pat recognized a critical gap in traditional engineering education: while students learned theory and fundamentals, they often lacked practical experience in sourcing parts, understanding costs and delivery times, and integrating components into working systems. “Many students’ experience was in the classroom, and they never really had to build something from scratch,” he observes.

Helio-STELLA addresses this gap by requiring students to engage with real-world engineering challenges. Unlike typical lab experiments with pre-selected, tested components, building a STELLA teaches essential skills often missing from curricula but crucial for NASA-level work where immediate prototyping and development capabilities are essential.

Scientific Validity Meets Citizen Science

While Helio-STELLA operates at ground level rather than the space-based platforms typically used in professional heliophysics, its measurements remain scientifically valuable. The instrument’s eight-wavelength visible light spectrometer, white light meter, and UVA sensor provide legitimate spectroscopic data, particularly useful during eclipses when atmospheric effects can be studied.

Pat positions the instrument within the citizen science realm, where lower individual precision is compensated by geographic distribution and accessibility. “We can have a whole bunch of them all over the place across the earth for low cost. That is a form of resolution,” he explains. The instrument automatically logs data to SD cards in spreadsheet format, making scientific analysis accessible to users at any skill level.

Real-World Applications and Discoveries

The UV detection capability has proven particularly engaging, offering practical applications that connect directly to daily life. Pat describes collaborative work with Carroll Community College, where students upgrade to a UVA/UVB/UVC sensor to test sunscreen effectiveness – demonstrating relative performance of different products in blocking harmful wavelengths.

Personal anecdotes add authenticity to the instrument’s capabilities. Pat recalls taking a Helio-STELLA to a family beach vacation to settle the age-old debate about UV exposure during cloudy conditions: “We turned it on and watched in real time as the UV light went up and down as cloud cover came by. We were able to prove that yes, even the thinnest clouds reduce the amount of UVA light.”

Evolution and Future Possibilities

The success of the original Helio-STELLA has spawned version two, incorporating additional sensors including a three-axis magnetometer and GPS device. While ground-based magnetometers have limitations compared to space instruments, they can demonstrate solar storm effects and magnetosphere variations. The GPS capability enables time-tagging and location data for correlation with other datasets, as demonstrated during successful tracking of 2024 solar storm data.

Pat’s vision extends even further with plans for enhanced modularity through an analog-to-digital converter board. This addition would allow users to create custom detectors for any phenomenon convertible to voltage, limited only by imagination. Examples include muon detection (planned by a NASA scientist) and solar power system monitoring for efficiency optimization under various conditions.

A Bridge to Professional Science

Perhaps most importantly, Helio-STELLA serves as an authentic bridge between educational activities and professional scientific instruments. The electronics used in STELLA have actually been deployed on real satellites, making it far more than an educational toy. Students working with STELLA engage with the same measurement principles and challenges faced by professional instrument developers, just at a more accessible scale and cost.

“It’s not just like a toy. It really is not just a toy,” Pat emphasizes. “It’s really showing you how scientific instruments work and the challenges to develop that are real.” This authenticity provides students with genuine preparation for STEM careers while maintaining the accessibility that makes widespread adoption possible.

The Ripple Effect

The enthusiastic reception Helio-STELLA receives wherever Pat demonstrates it speaks to its potential impact. “Everywhere I go, the reaction is always great. Everyone loves it. They want one. They’re going to build one,” he reports. The main challenge now is outreach – getting more people aware of the instrument’s existence and capabilities.

Pat’s advice to educators reflects his core philosophy: hands-on building experience, including parts procurement, assembly, programming, and troubleshooting, provides irreplaceable learning that complements textbook theory. “Things don’t always work right. You plugged it in wrong. Now what? Did I destroy it? Those things you can only really learn by hands-on experience.”

A Legacy of Accessible Innovation

The Helio-STELLA story represents more than just successful instrument development – it demonstrates how thoughtful engineering can democratize access to real scientific capabilities. By leveraging existing platforms, focusing on cost-effectiveness, and maintaining scientific validity, the team created an instrument that serves multiple constituencies: educators seeking affordable tools, students needing practical experience, and citizen scientists contributing to distributed data collection.

Pat’s journey from depression-era values through decades of NASA engineering to educational innovation shows how constraints can drive creativity. His enthusiasm for the project is infectious, built on the solid foundation of watching teachers’ eyes light up when they realize sophisticated scientific instruments don’t have to remain out of reach.

As Helio-STELLA continues to evolve and spread, it carries forward the principle that accessibility and scientific rigor aren’t mutually exclusive – they’re complementary forces that can expand the reach of space science education and inspire the next generation of STEM professionals.

Transcript

So begin with, Pat, can you tell us who you are and you know a bit about your background

and the path that led you working with NASA projects and workforce? What project you work on? Yeah. So I came to NASA.

I started working with NASA projects in 1988, came to Goddard in 89,

and I became a civil servant in 1990. So I’ve been here a while. I’ve seen a lot of changes.

I am an electronic engineer, specifically an electronic instrumentation engineer, and now more like electronic instrument

systems engineer, which means I kind of have my hand in all aspects of instrument development, which is awesome.

And STELLA is an instrument, so it kind of works out. Well, just a little more on the education side.

But I do have a background in instrument design development and things like that. As an engineer.

so you said you were an electrical systems engineer and an electrical instrument engineer.

Yeah. What’s the difference between so technically, I’m electronic engineer, not electronic. Okay.

People want to know the difference between that. In general, there’s a lot of overlap. Of course, electrical engineers are really thought to be more with power systems and distribution.

And what you would say less intricate, larger systems where electronic we’re dealing with like the micro circuits, transistors, things like that

a little more because there’s huge overlap anymore and it’s hard to distinguish between the two. But they do still have electrical and electronic engineering degrees.

So I’m an electronic engineer by degree. And then when I came to, Goddard specifically to work on, scientific

instruments, you could say my role here as it is as an electronic instrumentation

or instrument engineer and eventually an instrument systems engineer, because I became more familiar with disciplines outside of electronics, you know, the thermal, the,

the, power thermal, vacuum systems.

What other kind of aspects are there? Yeah. Mechanical engineering, all those things I got involved with

as an instrument systems engineer, especially small projects. So I’ve been you and I work in the science Directorate, not with any engineering directors.

I work directly with the scientists. When we try to conceive and collaborate and try to come up

with new applications to do scientific investigations based on opportunities, in other words, money to do stuff.

And they come in and say, hey, this, this whole thing we want to study, particularly my careers most been with The Sun,

although I have work with astrophysics also, where they decide, hey, there’s something we want to look into,

or we want to improve upon this type of instrument to discover, get better data. They work with me, and we can see that at the beginning level.

And then when it becomes a large mission that would be handed off to a larger team of engineers, or if it’s a small instrument,

particularly, CubeSats or most of my career sounding rockets, which are suborbital rockets, I would have my hand the entire way

right out to being out in the field, recovering them when they come down on a parachute, riding out the helicopter.

So, so, yeah, mainly done early on are small missions, which allows me to have my hands to the whole process, which I like.

Now, the downside is we usually have very little money, not as much time. And but that makes me very, I would say resourceful,

having to learn how to do things on the cheap, which I love. Hey my dad… Mom and dad grew up in the depression, so I was taught that way.

So I feel like that’s been my main contribution here at NASA, is learning how to do things when you don’t have many resources.

how did you first become involved with the Helio-STELLA project? What was the initial vision that you were thinking for Helio-STELLA

And how did it, how did it evolve during the development process? Sure. So, several years ago, I very luckily fell into

because someone recognized my interest and enthusiasm, into what was called, NSEC, National Space

Education Consortium, which then turned in the HEAT, more specifically, Heliophysics Education Activation Team.

So it was more of an educational side, an outreach, somewhat mostly educational

for getting heliophysics out there into the community with educators, scientists and an engineer.

Me, Paul Mirel was also involved before he. So I knew them. We collaborated and work together in the lab.

He was my mentor on several things. Sometimes I got to teach him something that he didn’t know, but mostly it was the other way around.

Brilliant, innovative, resourceful gentleman, which I always respect, because that’s where I come from.

And, I had seen him working on STELLA and, one of our labs here in the building, the STEM Innovation Lab,

which I was loosely involved with at the time, and then moved down the road, maybe a year or two.

We have an event here called the,Goddard on the Greenn, which is kind of where a lot of organizations at Goddard display what they’re doing.

You know, some of it is more science education, engineering, some of it’s food, some of it’s the clubs.

And then you came wheeling in a pulling a, you know, not a wheelbarrow, but, a wagon of STELLA’s and I go, hey, that looks familiar.

And that looks really cool. And we got the talking and we’re all excited and saying, hey, we should collaborate. And I said, yeah, let’s do a heliophysics STELLA.

And, and we got together, you and I, and we brainstormed and said, hey, do we really good?

If we could have a STELLA that was heliophysics, focused in time for the big eclipse coming around that year.

The big total solar eclipse in April of 2024. And we got together and we went to, Michael Kirk, who’s the PI on here?

And we had to sell it to him a little bit, but he said, yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s do it. And Paul Mirel made it happen.

He’s the engineer and software programmer, and he came up with a fantastic device

in time for us to give out kits for people to build, for us to build,

and for us to have spread out across the path of totality across the US,

in various locations to actually promote and actually measure, the sun’s behavior, during the eclipse, which was a great promotional,

but also scientifically, it was very interesting. And, I was very thrilled and happy, with it, as I think everyone else was.

But hats off to Paul for doing all the real work. I just kind of came up with the idea and got in the middle. As Paul likes to call me, he calls me the application engineer.

I, I call myself the salesman. But, I do promote the heck out of it. And everywhere I show people, they get really, really excited about it.

Primarily due to the cost, especially with educators. It’s so inexpensive, and that was our primary focus on it.

That may maybe another question that later, but we can come back to that. But that’s that’s how it all started.

And let’s do it in time for the eclipse. And we did. Elana Resnick was also with us from here and.

Yeah. Right. So the there was some contribution, I think it was, it was the four of us.

Yeah. Talking about the Helio-STELLA together. So it was Elana is from the education side.

She was able to kind of give us that pull. I was just kind of an excited engineer. Paul was the experience.

And you’re the guy who thought of the whole thing and manages all of STELLA. Fantastic. So glad we’re able to connect because it’s it’s perfect.

And it’s the kind of stuff I love doing. And I can do it in there.

I’m just really grateful that just all the timing worked out perfectly.

Yeah. And I just, I think it’s, I think from where I stand, it’s a huge success.

And it’s not done. I think there’s a lot of things we could still do,

So how does your work on STELLA slash Helios STELLA connect to other engineering projects? You’ve been involved with?

And obviously you mentioned low cost. So go ahead and continue with your career. Yeah. So absolutely absolutely low cost is it gives me

good, good, position to help develop this. Often we have to prototype things in the lab with just things

I have laying around, or I can borrow or things that don’t cost too much. And, of course, the the Arduino Raspberry Pi world has already been well

established and laid around, and so that just seemed like a natural, fit. And of course, we’ll get back into this.

STELLA has already been making use of those, for a while now, and that gives an accessibility to to education.

But again, we’ll get into that. But as far as my experience specifically, most of my career has been

with heliophysics, studying the sun and the sun’s effects on the Earth. And, Helio-STELLA is was aimed at that.

So, in particular, most of the instruments I’ve designed are are imaging spectrographs.

So looking at spectra and for people who aren’t, you know, in the scientific community, when you’re doing remote sensing, like looking at the sun or stars

and astronomy, most of the information is in spectra, not in a picture. A picture is pretty, but it basically gives you two dimensions versus intensity.

May, you know, whatever kind of light or wavelength region you’re looking. But when you look at the spectra, in other words, spread it out into a rainbow,

that’s really most of the information is, you know, you get you get to see what each energy level are.

So, you know, from that. And I’m not a scientist, I’m an engineer. So bare with me. When you spread it out and see all the energies or intensities at the various wavelengths or colors,

that allows you to figure out through some processing what that is that star or our,

sun is made out of how fast it’s moving, what temperature it is. And that gives you a lot more information where we can come up and theorize

just what the heck’s going on in a star, particularly ours. And I will tell you, from where I sit,

we still have a lot to learn, which is exciting. We’re still learning all the time about what’s going on with our sun

and how it affects us here on earth.

Okay. Can you walk us through some of the, engineering challenges you face creating an affordable, accessible, you know, heliophysics or just, instrument

itself, that can deliver actual, meaningful scientific data. So luckily, the challenges were very minimal

in this case due to the fact that the STELLA program already existed.

The majority of the instrument that I, that we came up with for STELLA had already been developed.

The software was developed, the instruments were integrated, which is basically an eight channel,

spectrometer that measures white light, intensity and I think eight, eight channels

of visible light that would already been implemented and tested in the software to develop. So when we sat down and thought, all I suggested was for an inexpensive,

useful, Heliophysics centered STELLA was to add a UV sensor.

And, so really all it was really needed was to add the UV sensor and trim down the software. Maybe, that was already there for the other STELLA, well, instrument suites.

So the only real challenge was time, right? We had the eclipse coming up and wanted to get it out there beforehand so people could go ahead, build one.

So, and again, that is an engineering challenge. There’s not just the you could say physics challenges of engineering.

There’s the time and money, challenge. So in this case, money wasn’t so bad because we came up with that is pretty inexpensive.

But it was time and again, Paul Mirel was able to, develop all that in record time.

And it worked. It worked great. But, so as an engineer, and which is probably true

outside of engineering, one of the real advantages and I can use a management term, we leveraged all the work and effort

developed that had already been done with STELLA to just make a modified and and in all honesty, a simplified version with an additional,

detector, the UV sensor. So, so it was great efficient use I think,

what’s what already been done and not having to reinvent the wheel, if you will.

one. The collaboration between engineers and educators seems to have been crucial to basically, the Helio-STELLA’s

development and STELLA’s development, of course, as well. Could you share some examples of how this cross collaboration worked in practice?

Sure. So as opposed to being I guess I don’t have a it wasn’t like a time synchronous collaboration.

It was more like my exposure and Paul’s exposure. Previously with educators, we kind of already knew

what kind of our goals would be. We I think I did speak to a few people about what they would think,

but I think Paul and I already knew, and you did already knew what this was going to be like. And, the main thing was accessibility.

Which part of that is cost, how we, you know, where can we get the parts, how much does it cost?

And, and one of the plans per, the PI here was for us to actually buy

enough parts for 20 kits to give them out, distribute them to folks. So all they had to do was put them together.

So it was also about fun project kit to build, which I think, in my opinion,

fifth grade all the way up to college. Absolutely. The, the STELLA, particularly the Helio-STELLA I’m

a lot more familiar with really had a wide range of potential, students where the the students were also the educators are not where it was easy

to build, all the way up to whether you were doing, higher level experiments or even modifying it at a high school or college level.

It really hit a wide audience, I think. And so like a lot of the collaboration was really from previous knowledge,

and we did speak to some educators a little bit to confirm it. But we were we were right on track from the beginning,

I think mainly accessibility, which like I said, is cost. The most rewarding thing to me is when we would go to, these

events like the are promoting the eclipse, where we had teacher, workshops where we were teaching

teachers how to teach heliophysics. I was promoting the new STELLA and as part of that,

they’d come by and I’d show them. And they’d go what is this? And when I told them how much it cost, their eyes lit up. Right?

I mean, because teachers today, you know, sometimes they have to buy this stuff with their own money to get what they need in the classroom.

And that this thing at the, you know, less than $100, last night shift, which was probably five months ago, if you already had,

a USB cable or connector and a micro SD card to plug this,

all the parts online, commercial $83 to build one of these. So it may be a little more now, but to me that is awesome.

And, again, that’s that’s what I think the biggest collaboration with teachers was with the accessibility.

Now, what it actually teaches is fairly simple, but it’s at a entry level.

It teaches and demonstrates at whatever age you are, what spectroscopy is, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of people,

they know what the rainbow is, but they don’t realize it from a scientific standpoint. You know what that really is?

You’re actually spreading out and looking at all the relative intensities of all the colors, and demonstrating that in the form of a data set that can be graphed

or analyzed very easily from this data set, which is recorded so that you can do scientific analysis or experimentation

to whatever level that student or teacher, is working at.

How do you see Helio-STELLA helping to develop engineering and technical skills in students who might become the next generation workforce.

Okay, that’s that’s, that’s a good question. As an engineer who felt really lucky with my the engineering school,

I went to, which was very hands on often in engineering at least.

A lot of educational institutions. So maybe it’s different now. We’re really heavy on the fundamentals and theory, which is very important.

And then they would expect that most people would learn the practical side on the job. Well, in a, in an environment here at NASA where we want to kind of be

in the lab developing and building stuff right off the bat. My school was pretty good that way, and we had a lot of hands on

and lab experience. And so many of the, the students, all their experience was in the classroom

and they never really had to build something from scratch. There would be maybe some lab, experiments,

but all the parts were already found, bought, tested. They already knew it worked. And so with with this, besides the science and the application

of like the Helio-STELLA, it would teach students another part of engineering which they may not get in most education.

And that is where do you get the parts? How much do they cost? How long does it take to get them?

And then hooking it all up together and making it work? That’s something that this STELLA could very, very well teach and at a low cost

that may not be readily available in any existing curriculum,

Could you explain some of the key technical features of Helio-STELLA and how they relate to professional instruments used in the field?

Okay, so again, I’m not a I’m not a scientist, but, Helios is a as a basic demonstration of, of spectroscopy.

You know, it’s a spectrometer in there which looks at, eight wavelengths of visible light,

as a white light meter. And then we also added a UVA sensor

to measure some what’s called near ultraviolet UVA.

So what that allows you to do is look at spectra, at the ground level, which honestly, in heliophysics we don’t do that as much.

We really want to get out of the atmosphere to look at a, you know, extreme ultraviolet out in the vacuum because the

Earth’s atmosphere blocks most of it. However, some of it gets down here, but it does demonstrate, spectroscopy

at a level that is actually useful, especially during eclipses. How does this light get scattered?

What likes are absorb, you know, what light is coming through the atmosphere that’s not directly coming through us?

From the, you know, from the sun that is normally blocked during an eclipse. So it was very useful to use this during the eclipse,

where scientists would be doing real high level science during eclipse. And we were able to see that the Helio-STELLA was actually acting very

much like higher end, more expensive, more precise, scientific instruments. So,

Helio-STELLA is definitely, you could say, depending on your opinion

as a scientist is can it fall into the the realm of citizen science, where it’s actually useful data to actually some real science?

Again, the real expensive instruments going spacecraft and things like that. But that doesn’t mean that this is not useful.

So one of the parameters in science is when you propose to do work is you have to do something new. It’s like, okay, we haven’t done this before.

This instrument either better in some ways it’s more sensitive, it has more resolution, blah, blah, blah, has higher performance, less noise.

But what what what, the STELLA’s can do, as you know, can give you more geographical resolution.

We can have a whole bunch of them all over the place across the earth for low cost.

And that is a form of resolution. And that’s like the basis of a lot of citizen science.

fantastic. And that’s. Yeah. So it is useful. And it demonstrates in line exactly what a lot of scientific instruments do.

It’s just a low cost version of that, you know. Also in particular the data sets.

How does it it gets the data, but it also logs it in, in this case a spreadsheet which pretty much anybody can import,

you know, look at on a computer graph and do analysis on it with a spreadsheet program.

That is key. And scientific instruments, you know, you, you can measure the data with the instrument, but what are you doing with it.

And so the Helio-STELLA is storing it automatically on an SD card.

And then in an easy format for people to exchange, look at and manipulate. That is a part of science a lot of people aren’t familiar with.

And Helio-STELLA does a great job of that.

I understand that UV detection capability is particularly valuable. Could you explain why this feature, was important

to include and how it works? Yeah. So the idea of adding the UV sensor to this was because the original STELLAs

did not have that. They already had the spectrograph. You guys have already built on that. So how can we make this? What else is there?

We can see on the surface of the earth. And I go, well, we can we can look at ultraviolet

because that’s really key from the sun. Ultraviolet light. You drive so much here it

you know, it damages plastics, breaks things down. You know, there’s health issues with UV.

I mean, we need some UV light to be healthy for too much. Of course, we know is bad. So, the UV, a sensor added,

you know, another capability to this without too much cost. And it allowed us to monitor, well, how does the sun’s UV output vary with,

you know, cloud cover, eclipses, whatnot, you know, from different directions?

I also thought of things like, well, we always hear about, oh, you need to wear UV blocking sunglasses or windshields like it?

Well, hey, we can kind of measure it now. It’s not a precise measurement that’s going to guarantee you’ll never get skin cancer, but it does demonstrate relative,

performance or blocking of different substances. And, right now

collaborating with, Carroll Community College, their electronic engineering department, they built a STELLA.

They’re excited, and they’re collaborating with, the physics department to actually do some experiments.

So we Paul has already added the software to this. If you just spend $15, you can replace the UVA sensor

with the UVA, UVB and UVC sensor. It’s more expensive. We didn’t put that in the original.

It’s going to cost another 15 bucks, which put us over the hundred dollars. But you can definitely make it that.

And they’re doing that at the community college to actually do experiments, putting different sunscreens on a, on a substrate

to see just how, well, relatively these different sunscreens, sunscreens can block UVA, UVA and UVB light,

which definitely affects skin cancer and sunburn and aging. So, again, it’s not a calibrated medical instrument.

But it does demonstrate relative performance of, of different substances, to block those wavelengths.

And, I think that’s really awesome because, as an example, when I was still excited about this, I still managed

to, years ago, I took one to the beach. So my family vacation, we’re all sitting around and a thin layer of clouds came over.

And of course, the age old myth or misinformation where people said, oh, thin layer of clouds.

That’s what you get. Sunburn. Worse with that. And I was like, no, you get misled thinking

there is no UV light because it’s cooler. It’s not as dark, there is still some UV light.

So you a lot of people get burned during those because they think they’re not getting it, but it absolutely is less UV light.

And I said, well, why are we arguing? I ran inside and got one and we turned it on and we watched it

in real time. We watched the UV light go up and down as the cloud cover came by.

So you were able we were able to prove that, yes, even the thinnest clouds reduce the amount of UVA light.

So so that was great. So you don’t have to have argue or wonder. Go trust a Google search. You can demonstrate it with your own instrument.

Could you envision an integrated system where multiple STELLA instruments work together to provide a more comprehensive data set?

What engineering? What engineering challenges would that represent? or present? All right, so, different ones of the same

configuration or different STELLA’s connected together. Different. Different STELLA’s, you know, you know, and so, you know, if you were to design

another STELLA, you know, something that would complement the heliophysics. STELLA. And all that, or, you know, as well as maybe enhance it as well.

What would you what would you put on there? What would you be thinking about? You know, how would you come up with it?

What would be the constraints and all that sort of thing? Right. So we’ve already worked on that. Paul, again, has already done a version two, if you will, that incorporates

the only other things we really think could be demonstrated of heliophysics. And that is a three axis magnetometer

and a GPS device. So, unfortunately, magnetometer on the surface of the Earth

isn’t quite as precise to predict or demonstrate the sun’s behavior, but it can in

certain cases during solar storms and, it still demonstrates some things.

It’s not quite as sensitive, but but it can all in one package show you,

magnetosphere variation along with any photometric. That means light variation of the UVA, B and C,

so ultraviolet light, the, the visible light, magnetic fields.

And then with the GPS, you could time, time tag and show exactly where you were and what time it was

so that you could register that with all kinds of other data. Which we did with some data.

No, it took during a solar storm, I think, in I can’t remember what year that one, I think it was 2024.

But but, you know, in one of our papers, as you saw, we were able to prove that the Helio-STELLA kind of tracked some solar storm data.

Pretty, pretty well, not with the resolution of multi-million dollar instruments, but it showed that it works.

And so that to me, that’s that’s almost that’s really citizen science. And showing that this thing is actually showing real data,

just not with the resolution of a much more expensive, unaccessible, instrument.

But but again, that’s kind of from what I understand, what, citizen science could be in that, instead of having something

that’s very, very sensitive, we have something where we have a whole bunch of them all over the planet, which

we can do. And, because it’s inexpensive, you can have all kinds of clubs, schools, everybody. And they have done that before with magnetometers.

But not with the Helio STELLA. But we can definitely do that with the Helio STELLA, in the future. And again, link it up with other STELLAs and their instrument suites.

Or we can make, you know, the modularity where people are kind of inventing and building their own pretty easily,

to fit their educational or our citizen science needs.

how do you think, basically that, stepping stone can happen with, say, the helio STELLA, to get up to, you know, starting

to understand some of the, some of the, actual professional instruments. And then you know, why.

And and then explaining how or why we need, say, those professional, instruments, those those,

you know, big say, you know, Helio, physics projects and all that. How can it be a stepping stone to do that?

Okay, so that’s a good question. I’m not not being a scientist. I can tell you just from experience, you know, seeing and building instruments that in the case of heliophysics,

Healy, Helio STELLA said measures light and different wavelengths, including UV light.

A magnetometer is something else that’s done in the case of expensive instruments and on spacecraft.

You know, once you’re outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, you can see a lot more light, particularly UV light, which is almost completely blocked by our atmosphere.

And also, we can get away from the Earth’s magnetic field to, to it. As we get closer to that, the sun, we can see its magnetic field

or our Madigan field farther away, which is, you know, more influenced. Obviously, by by the up by the Earth, solar, wind and things like that.

And so, so helium STELLA is like one of those, just like I said, a much more inexpensive and less lesser performing.

But as far as a stepping stone of light to the instrument development, it’s very similar, you know,

now, like been going on for years, as you know, money’s tighter. You don’t have as much opportunities as back in the day.

Maybe that’ll change with these huge, very expensive ten, 20, 30 year old development time, projects like Hubble and the Next generation Telescope.

You have to come up with ways of building smaller, more inexpensive ones. And that’s exactly what this is.

And in fact, some of the electronics that is used in STELLA, we have put on actual satellites.

We really have. So what we’ve learned doing STELLA and other people have learned doing STELLA type educational projects are absolutely transferable

to real scientific instruments, although they may be beefed up or maybe some other instruments or detectors to give a little bit more

resolution for, performance per se. But there’s some overlap. It’s not just like a toy.

It really is not just a toy. It’s really showing you how scientific instruments work and the challenges to develop that,

are I think it’s real. So it’s a it’s a great education science demonstration and a citizen science tool

that is accessible both cost and availability. Sorry, I’m back on my sales pitch, but it’s true.

I truly believe it.

What are your hopes for the future of Helio-STELLA and its impact on STEM education?

Yeah, so I have to say, my experience, which is limited in some way, everywhere I go, where there’s educators or people who are sort of interested in like this,

whereas educational conference or it’s a real scientific conference. When I show this to people there, the reaction is always great.

Everyone loves it. They want one. They’re going to build one. Where do I find out about it everybody seems to be really,

really excited about it. So that being the sense, I think there’s still a long way to go out there.

And to me, the biggest challenge is letting people know about it I think the more people we can reach, the more it’ll be used,

the more will be built, the more it will be applied. And of course, we haven’t touched on that,

but the modularity and easily modifiable architecture of this will allow people to custom build their own very easily.

And I, and my aspiration in the future is not what I want to do, but what all these other people who are educators and know better

than I what needs, you know, what educational gaps and scientific gaps citizen science, need to be filled.

And so my excitement is my goal is to I need to get the word out more. And we’re doing this right now. It’s great.

And the more people we can show this to, I think we don’t know where it’s going to go. But my me, particularly the next generation, Helio-STELLA

again is like almost already built with, three axis magnetometer, a GPS sensor that already has the time stamp showing the data.

But what I would also like to add is something which would be basically another board that you could just buy online.

That’s a four channel, voltage measure, also known as an analog to digital converter.

And once you put in the software for that to actually just measure a voltage along some lines, you as the owner, user, educator, tinker or whatever,

you can build your own detector that can detect anything you want and just convert it to a voltage, and this thing will log it

and put it in a spreadsheet for you. You don’t need to change the software on this. And you know, there’s a scientist here, one of our big way smarter than me

scientists, she already has plans to make a muon detector for this. And that’s just, I mean, so

I think really, the sky’s the limit when we put an ADT converter on this ADT converter board and,

then people can build their own detectors, detecting whatever they want. And I know in one of our papers, I was thinking, okay, if someone wants to do experiments

or monitor their solar power system, they can just measure the output of the solar power system with us for fun, for

education, for their home, their business, against what the sun is doing, and see just how efficient it is.

And then you can then you can optimize your system based on cloud cover storms, which colors are better than others?

Which produces more power when the sun’s more red versus a violet or indigo, those kind of things.

It’s just the sky’s the limit, I think. And that’s what I’m the most excited about, because I think once we add that

it’s only limited to people’s imagination.

So, what advice would you give to educators who are using Helio-STELLAs to prepare students for future careers in STEM.

That’s a good question. I think, in the case of of Helio-STELLA like, like other projects,

actually having to build something and maybe even obtain the parts

or buy them, find them, put it all together, make it work is absolutely a great part of Stem education, particularly

if you are going into engineering or even science, to because it goes beyond what it says in the textbook.

And you get real world challenges. Things don’t always work right. You know, I plugged it in wrong. Now what I did, I destroy it. Let’s test that.

Make sure. Do I have to buy another one? Those things you can only really learn by hands on, experience it.

So, I think, having STELLA’s, are are things like STELLA’s where the students actually have to put it

together, program it, and make it work is a great lesson in Stem education.

Particularly the easy part, the engineering part, and the t the t right.

Technology is that science technology get forget. Yeah. So this is definitely hits all of those

The post The Helio-STELLA Story: Engineering Innovation Meets Educational Access appeared first on STELLA.

Building Tomorrow’s STEM Professionals: How STELLA Bridges Workforce Skills and Education

Michael Taylor — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 22:10:41 +0000

Building Tomorrow's STEM Professionals: How STELLA Bridges Workforce Skills and Education

Video Summary

“When we talk about engaging the scientific community,” Resnick concludes, “the biggest indicator of success is giving students real opportunities to engage with scientific results and NASA missions they wouldn’t be able to touch without using the STELLA.”

The Educator Behind the Innovation

When Elana Resnick collaborated with the STELLA project, she brought a unique combination of expertise as both a classroom teacher and university lecturer specializing in physics, engineering, and robotics education. Her experience running professional development for high school physics teachers and serving on the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Committee for Science Education made her ideally suited to help transform scientific instruments into powerful educational tools.

A Foundation in Scientific Method

“Everything starts with an observation,” Resnick explains, highlighting the philosophy that drew her to the STELLA project. This alignment with the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) method she learned at Rutgers University under Eugenia Atkins shapes her approach to science education. The STELLA instruments, with their focus on observational data collection, provide students the perfect platform to observe phenomena, develop patterns, formulate hypotheses, and conduct experiments.

Transforming Technology for Education

The evolution from standard spectrometer to the Helio-STELLA represented a collaborative effort to connect students with heliophysics concepts. Resnick was particularly excited about incorporating UV detection capabilities. While many teachers use UV beads to demonstrate ultraviolet light, she recognized the value of providing quantifiable data. “It’s something different when it’s actually a detector and they can put a number to it instead of it just changing colors,” she explains. “It drives the meaning home a lot more.”

Accessibility and Workforce Development

Perhaps most important to Resnick is STELLA’s affordability and accessibility. “Just because this thing is cheap doesn’t mean it’s not powerful,” she emphasizes. This democratization of technology enables more students—regardless of school funding—to gain hands-on experience with scientific instruments similar to those used in professional settings, developing technical skills directly applicable to future careers.

Real-World Applications

The project gained further validation when researchers began using Helio-STELLA to collect data during geomagnetic storms. This real-world application demonstrated how classroom tools could connect directly to current scientific research, providing students with authentic experiences that mirror professional scientific work—a crucial aspect of workforce preparation.

Encouraging Student-Driven Inquiry

For Resnick, STELLA’s greatest potential lies in its ability to engage students in asking their own questions. Rather than prescribing specific activities, she advocates “throwing that back to the teachers” and encouraging students to formulate their own inquiries. This approach builds critical thinking and problem-solving skills essential for future STEM professionals facing unknown challenges.

Building Tomorrow’s STEM Workforce

Through Elana Resnick’s contributions, STELLA has evolved into more than just a classroom spectrometer—it’s become a bridge connecting students to the excitement of scientific discovery while developing workforce-ready skills. By making complex scientific concepts tangible and providing hands-on experience with instrumentation, STELLA helps prepare students for careers in fields ranging from environmental science to space technology.

Transcript

Mike Taylor: Can you tell me a bit about yourself? You, I know you’ve described yourself as super evidence based and spot on every state of the art, state of the art educational thing that’s going on.

Mike Taylor: Can you share what your current educational research most influences your approach to developing tools like the Helio-STELLA or just tools in general?

Elana Resnick: Yeah. So, I come from a background in the investigative science learning environment, the ISLE method. I was taught by one of the founders, Eugenia Atkins at Rutgers University. That’s where I got my master’s in physics education.

Elana Resnick: And that’s where I learned everything about what I know about how to teach physics. And through my professional network of educators, I’m constantly getting blown away by amazing and incredible work and really cool stuff that they continue to push the envelope in physics education research. So that’s why I get to still learn about it. And because of that part of the ISLE method and I’ll refer to it as ISLE moving forward instead of investigative science learning environment.

[Content continues]

Mike Taylor: But I think that it’s something different when it’s actually a detector, and they can put a number to it instead of it just changing colors. It it drives the meaning home a lot more. And I think that that is a nice connection that students can make. And so that’s one of my favorite parts about building it, putting it together.

Elana Resnick: And honestly, I am impressed by the whole team that I got to work with, that we could come together and create something and have it exist within. I don’t know how short of a time was that? Was that well, you’re talking about Paul Miro and Pat Haas. Yeah, literally both of them being having such a great engineering background, just building it out, you know.

Elana Resnick: Yeah. So like, as we’re talking about ideas and they’d be like, yeah, we have a thing that you can do that. Yeah. We have a and I don’t think that that thing is too expensive. Yeah. Let’s throw that one on there. And just like the whole collaborative process was also it was also really neat. And I didn’t expect for it to happen like that.

Elana Resnick: And I don’t know what I expected, but it was really exciting.

Mike Taylor: If you had the chance, what things would you like to see it used for?

Mike Taylor: What do you think it would be useful for? And all of that?

Elana Resnick: To be honest, I have. I want to throw that one back to the teachers. I want them to come up with cool ideas. I want students to come up with cool ideas. I want them to ask the good questions, because it’s been three years since I’ve even necessarily looked at the teaching standards these days, and, you know, I want I like always challenging people to ask good questions.

Elana Resnick: And I think that they would ask some questions that I haven’t even thought of.

Mike Taylor: There’s someone, committed to evidence based education. How do you measure the effectiveness of Helios still in achieving learning objectives?

Elana Resnick: That’s a good question. I would say that definitely having, like, gaining pre knowledge and post knowledge is huge for what we would need to do in order to actually measure that. And also seeing how often students bring it up themselves afterwards.

Elana Resnick: So after you leave the classroom, right. And then the students come back to their teachers, are they still talking about the things that they did with the salad yesterday? Are they talking about it a month from now? Are you going to hear them? You know, asking to pull it out when they hear about something interesting going on in Science News today?

Elana Resnick: You know, so I think that that would be the biggest indicator that, you know, that you’re achieving some real success with the students and giving them real opportunities to engage with the scientific community, scientific results and really cool NASA missions that they wouldn’t be able to touch without using the STELLA.

The post Building Tomorrow’s STEM Professionals: How STELLA Bridges Workforce Skills and Education appeared first on STELLA.

Video Archives - STELLA

There Will Be More of Us: Rachel Stagner on STELLA, ARSET & Growing a NASA Mission-Literate Workforce

There Will Be More of Us: Rachel Stagner on STELLA, ARSET & Growing a NASA Mission-Literate Workforce

About Rachel Stagner

STELLA in the Classroom

ARSET as a Starting Point

"There Will Be More of Us"

Resources

STELLA / ARSET Interview Transcript

SEGMENT 1 — Introduction & Background

SEGMENT 2 — CCRI Program, STELLA & Curriculum

SEGMENT 3 — STELLA Workshops & Growing the Community

SEGMENT 4 — Introducing STELLA to Students

SEGMENT 5 — How ARSET Prepares Students for STELLA

SEGMENT 6 — Student Responses & STELLA Engagement

SEGMENT 7 — Kenneth Leslie’s Summer STELLA Boot Camp

SEGMENT 8 — STELLA and ARSET as Complementary Tools

SEGMENT 9 — What Teachers Need to Feel Confident

SEGMENT 10 — Follow-Up PD & Cycling Teachers Back

SEGMENT 11 — Advice for Teachers New to STELLA or ARSET

SEGMENT 12 — Vision for the Future of STELLA & ARSET

Building Tomorrow’s Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time

Building Tomorrow's Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time

How NASA's STELLA Instrument is Multiplying Mission Impact Through Student Engagement​

The Participants

More Than Rocket Ships

A Mission Multiplier: Connecting Space and Ground

Workforce Development for a Earth Observation

Skills That Transfer Across NASA's Mission Spheres

Learning from Failure, Contributing to Progress

Multiplying NASA's Earth Science Impact

A Model for the Future

The Bottom Line

Transcript

COASTWISE Interview Transcript

Related Resources:

Students Build AI-Powered Drone for Earth Observation | NASA SEES Internship Journey

Students Build AI-Powered Drone for Earth Observation | NASA SEES Internship

Video Summary

Project Origins and Technical Design

Learning Through Hands-On Experience

Future Directions and Impact

Transcript

Introduction & Team Members

NASA SEES Program & Project Origins

What is Earth Lens?

Coming Together

Combining Hardware & Citizen Science

Building the Drone – Hardware Development

Graduate Student Mentorship & Support

Technical Challenges – Raspberry Pi & Flight Systems

Dual Spectrometer System

Uncertainty, Data Processing & AI Classification

The Software Application – Real-Time Insights

NASA Mission Data Comparisons

Division of Labor & Team Roles

Building on a Mature Program

Skills Development & Teamwork

Agricultural Applications

Comparing with NASA Satellite Data

Future Developments

Experience Influencing Future Pathways

Most Rewarding Aspects & Takeaways

Related Links

From Orbit to Earth: Agricultural Workforce Development using Real-Time Spectrometry

From Orbit to Earth: Agricultural Workforce Development using Real-Time Spectrometry

Video Summary

Transcript

Using STELLA in the Field and at the STEM Fair

NASA Satellite Comparison

The STELLA Experience

Technical Challenges and Learning Curve

Plans for the Future

Related Links

Petya in the Field

Petya in the Field

Video Summary

Featured Expert and Workforce Development

NASA Mission Applications and Landsat Connections

Professional Field Protocols and Technical Training

How NASA's STELLA Instrument is Multiplying Mission Impact Through Student Engagement