NASA and OPTIMUS PRIME Collaborate to Educate Youth

OPTIMUS PRIME image courtesy Hasbro.   

NASA has developed a contest to raise students' awareness of technology
transfer efforts and how NASA technologies contribute to our everyday
lives.

NASA is collaborating with Hasbro using the correlation between the
popular TRANSFORMERS brand, featuring its leader OPTIMUS PRIME, and
spinoffs from NASA technologies created for aeronautics and space
missions that are used here on Earth. The goal is to help students
understand that NASA technology 'transforms' into things that are used
daily. These 'transformed' technologies include water purifiers, medical
imaging software, or fabric that protects against UV rays.

The Innovative Partnerships Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in conjunction with NASA's Office of
Education, has designed a video contest for students from third to
eighth grade. Each student, or group of students, will submit a three-
to five-minute video on a selected NASA spinoff technology listed in the
2009 Spinoff publication. Videos must demonstrate an understanding of
the NASA spinoff technology and the associated NASA mission, as well as
the commercial application and public benefit associated with the
“transformed” technology. Video entries are due by December 31.

The videos will be posted on the NASA YouTube channel, and the public
will be responsible for the first round of judging. The top five
submissions from each of the two grade groups (third-fifth and
sixth-eighth) will advance for final judging. A NASA panel will select a
winning entry from each group, and the students will receive a glass
OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award at the Space Foundation's National Space
Symposium in 2011. The innovators of the NASA technology highlighted in
the winning videos also will receive trophies, along with their
commercial partners.

Related Links:

› OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award website
› NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program
› NASA's Spinoff publication
› NASA's YouTube Channel