'Lord British' launches competition for top space adventure
British-born astronaut Richard Garriott, aka 'Lord British', has announced the launch of Our Space, a new competition with prizes that are out of this world.
Led by Queen Mary, University of London and supported by the UK Space Agency, Our Space challenges school children to create an amazing digital adventure, a flight of imagination about their own space trip, or a class video to help others understand how to get to and live in space.
Top prizes, including a trip to Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and Johnson Space Centre in Texas, will be awarded to the best entries that capture the excitement of exploring space.
Richard has uploaded unique video footage from his 2008 International Space Station visit onto an interactive website created by GovEd Communications who have edited the footage into 'bite-size' sequences, which young people are free to use in their competition entries. "I hope that through these special videos, people can share my passion for space," he said. "This competition is an excellent chance to experience the incredible fun and learning I was lucky enough to have on my mission. This time, you are in charge and the countdown has started!"
One of the first visitors to the site, Olivia age 15 from Lewisham, said: "Richard is very entertaining and makes his videos fun and intriguing. It has already persuaded me to embark on a space adventure."
Ryan, also 15, said after his visit: "The videos are interesting and surprisingly funny. He does the things you’d want to do in space, have fun!"
Professor Peter McOwan from Queen Mary, University of London, who leads the Our Space partnership, said: "Richard's life as a games developer is already legendary; Our Space now adds a new level to that legend. It's been an amazing journey for the team working on making these space adventures accessible, educational and fun."
Ravi Kapur, Managing Director of GovEd Communications, said: "Space is the perfect science education tool. Richard has filmed all kinds of incredible things in space that you couldn't dream of doing on Earth, which is what makes them so thrilling. Imagine trying to guess what physics, maths and biology experiments would be like in zero-gravity, now you can see them all online and even try out your own."
Chris Barber, Director of the International Space School Educational Trust (ISSET) said, "This competition is a brilliant and imaginative way to stimulate young people's scientific minds. The opportunity to work with inspirational people at the heart of the world’s biggest exploration project - the human space programme - is not to be missed.
The competition closes on 5 July 2010 and the winners will be judged by a panel of space, education and media experts, along with Richard Garriott himself.
As well as a trip to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and Johnson Space Centre in Texas with the ISSET, the galaxy of cool prizes includes visits to the House of Commons, special entry tickets to Farnborough Futures Day, tickets to the National Space Centre, World Space Week invitations to Intech, an iPod Touch, and signed goodies from Richard Garriott and Lucy Hawking, daughter of physicist Professor Stephen Hawking.
To find out more about the competition and to get first hand tips on how to create your digital space adventure check out: http://www.our-space.org
1. Contacts:
For information about the Our Space education challenges, contact:
Heather MacRae
Email: heather@venturethinking.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1279 833004
Mobile: +44 (0) 781 5768699
For information about Richard Garriott’s mission, to request an interview and to access high resolution images, contact:
Stacey Tearne
Space Adventures
Email: stearne@spaceadventures.com
Tel: +1 703 894 2192
Mobile: +1 202 256 7917
For other information, contact:
Simon Levey
Communications Officer at Queen Mary, University of London
Email: s.levey@qmul.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 5404
Mobile: +44 (0) 7740 346 737
2. About Science education
The number of jobs in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics sectors will expand by over three quarters of a million by 2014. Factoring in those who will retire or leave these sectors, there will be a total of nearly 2.4 million jobs to be filled. Companies expect a graduate recruitment shortfall in 2007. The number of students securing first degrees in physics, chemistry and engineering is falling dramatically. The number of students studying physics, one the most popular science A-Level has fallen by 57% in just over 20 years. Source: Confederation of British Industry, 2007.
The Education and Skills Case For Space (Spencer and Hulbert, 2006) notes that space has a direct, positive effect on educational and career decisions and on participation and achievement in physical sciences at GCSE, A-level and in Higher Education. Space studies also improve motivation and behaviour.
3. About Space
Space adds £ 7 billion to the UK economy each year and supports 70,000 jobs.
Space produces one of the highest skilled workforces in the UK. The UK is a world leader in global mobile satellite communications, Earth observation, space enabled creative industries and in planetary science.
4. About Our Space
Our Space is a partnership project led by Queen Mary, University of London. The website and videos have been put together by education and digital media specialists GovEd Communications and Venture Thinking, and also include NASA film footage from Footagevault.com It received seed funding from the UK Space Agency (UKSA), the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) and investment from Richard Garriott.
5. About Richard Garriott
Richard Garriott, 48, is the British-born son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who participated in two space missions including the 1973 Skylab 3 mission that orbited the Earth for 59 days and smashed the previous record for human spaceflight duration. Garriott paid $30 million to space tourism firm Space Adventures of Vienna, Virginia, USA for his visit to the International Space Station in October 2008. As well as commercial experiments Richard too with him a special space station edition of The Metro with experiments that he carried out for British school children. Unique footage of these experiments is on the website.
Richard joined his father Owen Garriott as being one of the first 500 humans to leave the planet. He is an exponent of the commercial value of human spaceflight and will be taking
For more information, visit: www.richardinspace.com and http://www.richardgarriott.com
6. About Space Adventures
Space Adventures has organised the flights of the world’s first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi. It has its headquarters in Vienna, Virginia, USA, with an office in Moscow.
It offers a variety of programmes such as spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the Moon, zero-gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programmes and reservations on future sub-orbital spacecrafts.
For more information, visit www.spaceadventures.com
7. About GovEd Communications
GovEd Communications is a multi-disciplinary company working in education, science communication, digital media and technology. Their highly innovative approach to science education has ranged from award-winning film and television production to interactive technologies such as Space Signpost and the Footagevault.com online space film archive. They have designed and built in the Our Space multi-media website and edited Richard’s unique Space footage.
Website: http://www.goved.co.uk
8. About Venture Thinking
Venture Thinking is an educational consultancy specialising in projects inspiring interest in learning. It works closely with the UK Space Agency and Ideas Foundation to develop exciting learning projects such as Our Space.
9. About Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions with some 15,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary’s 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across 21 academic departments and institutes, within three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Ranked 11th in the UK according to the Guardian analysis of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, Queen Mary has been described as ‘the biggest star among the research-intensive institutions’ by the Times Higher Education and also won the 'Most Improved Student Experience' award for 2009, reflecting the superb academic and social experience offered to all students at the College. The College has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.
Queen Mary has an annual turnover of £220 million, research income worth £61 million, and generates employment and output worth £600 million to the UK economy each year. As a member of the 1994 Group of research-focused universities, Queen Mary has made a strategic commitment to the highest quality of research, but also to the best possible educational, cultural and social experience for its students.
The College is unique amongst London's universities in being able to offer a completely integrated residential campus, with a 2,000-bed award-winning Student Village on its Mile End campus.
Website: http://www.qmul.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/QMUL