New YouTube Space Station Experiment Contest

By Nancy Atkinson - October 11, 2011 at 1:09 PM UTC | Space Exploration

What's a good way to generate excitement around the whole world for the International Space Station? Create a contest for kids from anywhere on the planet to have their idea for a science experiment performed by astronauts on the space station, with it live-streamed back to Earth.

YouTube SpaceLab

is an open competition inviting 14 - 18 year olds to come up with an idea for a science experiment for space. You don't have to actually do the experiment, you just have to make a 2-minute video of yourself explaining it.

The tagline for this contest is "Your experiment, 250 miles above the Earth, for the whole world to see," and this should be a really fun and engaging world-wide contest that is sure to generate a lot of interest.

Students in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to

YouTube.com/SpaceLab

, and you can find more information about the contest

at that link, too

.

Deadline is Dec. 7. The panel of judges is a veritable Who's Who of space mover and shakers, including Dr. Stephen Hawking, Bertrand Piccard, Professor Colin Pillinger, Peter Diamandis, Guy Laliberté, Richard Garriott, astronauts Leland Melvin, Chris Hadfield, and Bill Gerstenmaier from NASA.

There are some other great prizes, too. Six regional finalists will gather in Washington, D.C., in March 2012 to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive other prizes. From them, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth and live streamed on YouTube. Additionally, the global winners will get to choose a unique space experience as a prize: either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they are 18 years old, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts.

The remaining four regional winners will also receive a trip to the U.S., a ZERO-G flight, and a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop. The contest is sponsored by YouTube and Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures and space agencies NASA, ESA, and JAXA.

For more info:

YouTube.com/SpaceLab

(And yes, it is interesting that while the first video includes shuttle launch imagery the audio is from Apollo. Space mash-up?)

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com