Nasa scientist Matt Rogers shares his knowledge with pupils at Henderson Valley Primary School. Photo / Brett Phibbs
It's not every day that a group of Kiwi primary school students gets to help American space agency Nasa first-hand with its scientific research into clouds.
But that's exactly what Henderson Valley Primary School in Auckland is doing.
Not only are the students collecting cloud observations for Nasa,
they were visited yesterday by two of the agency's representatives.
The students are helping Nasa with its CloudSat mission - a programme studying the properties of clouds using a special space-based radar that can look inside clouds.
Matt Rogers, who is working on the Nasa project out of Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science, said yesterday that 84 schools around the world, including six from New Zealand, were involved. The students take pictures of the sky reflected in a convex mirror, then record their observations. The information is then sent to Nasa via the internet.
"They make these observations on days when the CloudSat satellite is in orbit over their schools and then send in their data to our collection site in the US," Mr Rogers said. "[The students] are a big help and we hope it gets them into science."
Ten-year-old Conor Doran has been involved in the scheme for about a year and said it was cool to meet the men from Nasa.
When asked why he liked being involved in the project, he said: "Getting out of class, it's fun, and I've learnt all the cloud names."
Mr Rogers and his colleague Peter Falcon, who have also visited schools in Dunedin and Gisborne, gave a presentation to the students and answered questions.
