FabSpace 2.0 for Kids
It is really exciting and charming to interact with kids and FabSpace Darmstadt had that opportunity to welcome more than 20 kids in the Laboratory at the Institute of Geodesy, Darmstadt University of Technology. All those kids are in different age group as 10 – 12 years and they are kids of Merck employees. In their occasion in summer named as Merck-Holiday-Week they wanted to know more about earth science, satellite technologies and space science in general. It says “young brains are fertile than an older one” and it is the high time for them to start thinking about those complex sciences. Darmstadt is a hub of space science including relevant organizations like ESOC, EUMETSAT and many more companies. Therefore, kids are also really enthusiastic to know about what is the role of those space industries and how they are practicing space science.
In the beginning kids were introduced the hierarchy of the academic system and what is the specialty of Institute of Geodesy and the project FabSpace 2.0. later on the fundamentals of earth observation satellites were explained. It was an outstanding interactive environment while explaining in local language (German) how satellites can help us improving our life. How satellites are monitoring the earth from space for instance, natural and manmade hazards (i.e. flood, landslide, volcanos, forest fire, oil spill etc.), mapping water resources and forest, managing transportation to reduce air pollution etc.
In the next point kids were introduced by the basics of geodesy and navigation satellites. How navigation services as Galileo/EGNOS or GPS is working for the better positioning system. In an open discussion on how navigation signal works inside a tunnel, kids were very curious and they have very fresh and innovative answers.
The root of our next generation is all of our young stars. It is our social and/or political responsibility to provide them a better environment and proper guidelines to grow-up. It is indeed an outstanding movement by FabSpace to introduce space science and geo-science for their better future. Although, FabSpace all over the Europe act as a pre-incubator for satellite data driven business creation but getting in touch with kids and showing them clear pathway of shaping our future through earth observation and geospatial technologies was a great pleasure.