TATA is creating an international collaboration with visionaries like you who see the settling of our Moon and a human mission to Mars as a reality in our lifetime. The Atacama Center of Excellence for Space Studies (working title), a multifaceted project, includes the development of Chile’s first formal institute of astrobiology (a university annex onsite) with full scale simulations for the Moon Mars Atacama Research Station analogue habitat (MMARS) and a Lunar Settlement (hotel/education center/thematic tourism) as a funding instrument to support infrastructure and rotations at MMARS.
The multidisciplinary scope of the Atacama Center of Excellence (ACE) offers high fidelity opportunities for researchers and entrepreneurs who use our analogue sites as a proving ground to test their innovations that are associated with new space commerce.
Collaborators who work with experts in the TATA Education Division will be able to fulfill educational outreach goals and obligations associated with their funding agencies. The mission of TATA is to inspire a global cohort of middle school citizen scientists and teachers to collaborate on a wide range of research activities with scientists in highly technical environments, as well as math, language arts, social sciences, and fine arts.
Adolescents get motivated when challenged to contribute to meaningful scientific work, evidenced by TATA “minds-on” activities using data from NASA, NOAA, and Salk Institute. NASA recognizes citizen scientists as a significant mission resource to relieve scientists of the somewhat menial tasks required to manipulate and organize terabytes of data gathered by evermore sophisticated technologies (the Stardust mission for example).
Empirically based research through Global Unified Earth Systems Studies (GUESS) finds that individuals at the onset of pubescence are resourceful, creative and have tremendous potential for innovation. Analyses of peer-review findings in cognitive neurophysiology cite the growth of the frontal cortex (often dubbed the Executive Center) as the rationale for a marked parallel increase in human intellectuality during this stage of development.
The Executive Center involves higher mental functions such as decision making, value judgment, logic, and distinguishing right from wrong. This milestone, in antiquity, used to facilitate learning to be a contributing member of the community in a concern for the common good. Nuclear family trends now override ancient extended family socialization patterns that elicited a sense of belonging. Is it any wonder why we see adolescents as defiant and poor decision makers with a priority to be cool and belong to the in crowd?
It is time to raise the Space Generation, our future workforce, in an educational system that will take on new meanings when we pave new avenues to demystify learning by facilitating involvement on this multinational project that is literally out of this world.
Young citizen scientists will gain a sense of purpose and pride of ownership as we point their EYES to the Sky and engage them in activities that contribute to research and have the potential for spinoffs with applications that could advance sustainability on Earth.
tata4now,