A nearly $5.5-million grant from the US space agency NASA is helping HamSCI, the citizen science group, to bring schools, museums, libraries and other community resources the experience of scientific discoveries that have previously been limited to laboratory settings.

NASA calls this initiative Science Activation, or SciAct, and its collaborators include such organizations as the ARRL Teachers Institute, the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Space Science Institute.

HamSCI's founder, Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, is the principal investigator and he will oversee a program called "Discovering the SPARC: Space Physics Through Amateur Radio."

Through so-called discovery stations set up at different public venues, visitors can gain a better understanding of solar activity's impact on communications. They will get to observe real-time space weather data. Separately, an estimated 85 space-weather monitors will be placed throughout the country gathering data on radio signals and the ionosphere -- another window into public education on the impact of such things as meteor showers and solar eclipses.

Nathaniel called SciAct [quote] "a premier program in which NASA gives its science back to the very people who fund this work — the American people." [endquote]