Sessions To Be Held At Florida Institute Of Technology In Melbourne

The International Space University (ISU) has selected the United States’ Florida Space Coast as a natural fit to convene its Space Studies Program as the US gateway to exploring, discovering and understanding our universe. There are only five months to go before the launch of the 25th annual Space Studies Program (SSP) session at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Florida, and the NASA Kennedy Space Center north of Melbourne. The session will convene June 4 to August 3, 2012.

Celebrating this 25th SSP in the USA with the support of NASA will be a very special event as 25 years ago NASA was already among the supporting space agencies at the inauguration of the International Space University in MIT, Boston. Both institutions have been collaborating ever since. “This partnership with Florida Institute of Technology to host the International Space University, will be bringing to Brevard some of the best and brightest in the aerospace industry,” says Robert Cabana, KSC Center Director.

NASA’s mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. Since its inception, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) has played an integral role in the work performed by NASA. For three decades, NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet safely carried hundreds of astronauts on dozens of successful missions, which resulted in immeasurable scientific gains. Every manned space flight mission, including all of the Space Shuttle missions, was launched from KSC.

ISU will benefit from NASA’s experts who will share their experience with the over 100 participants coming to Melbourne from all over the world. Indeed, dozens of NASA experts kindly accepted ISU’s invitation to take part in the program. Amongst them will be Robert Cabana and Janet Petro, the KSC Center Director and Deputy Center Director, respectively. “We are profoundly pleased and honored with the level of support that KSC scientists have committed to the program. SSP12 will certainly be memorable both for its location and for the quality of the academic experience,” said Angie Bukley, ISU Dean and SSP Director.

ISU provides an interdisciplinary education in the context of an intercultural and international environment to support the development of future leaders in the world space community. The SSP offers its participants a unique and comprehensive education covering all aspects of space programs and enterprises including space physical sciences, space systems engineering, policy and law, business and management, space and society, satellite applications, and space life sciences and human spaceflight.

Each summer ISU offers this intense nine-week course designed for post-graduate university students and professionals of all experience levels and disciplines. The site of the SSP changes annually, making it a unique educational concept and building on the fundamental ISU tenant of an international experience. The SSP core lecture series serves as the foundation on which the more in-depth activities undertaken in the seven departments are built. The team projects provide the participants with an international and intercultural team working experience wherein they must not only refine the topic as a team, but also produce professional quality reports and final presentations, all in the span of a few weeks.

This year, the NASA KSC is also sponsoring one of the four Team Projects to be executed during the session. The topic of this project is, appropriately, Future Spaceports, the goal of which is to recommend architectures, transformative technologies, and design processes that enable an expansion of Earth-based spaceport capabilities to on-orbit and planetary surface spaceports. The project will be led by NASA experts from NASA KSC.

FMI: www.su.isunet.edu