Maker Faire is back! Before the pandemic Magnitude.io had been able to bring space experiences to Maker Faire in both the SF Bay Area and New York. It was so great to see old friends and make new ones at the Mare Island Maker Faire. The Magnitude team spent this last weekend with a few of our space friends sharing the past, present, and future of space exploration centered on the International Space Station. …
Year 4. This was the 2016-2017 season. With the engineering expertise of our commercial service provider, Space Tango, and support from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), Magnitude was finally headed to the International Space Station! Flown aboard the SpaceX-10 resupply mission, ExoLab-1 launched from Kennedy Space Center’s historic pad 39A on 19 February, 2017, and returned home 30 days later. The plant that was studied was the model organism Arabidopsis…
The genesis of Magnitude was 10 years ago today! On that first day of summer in 2013, Tony and I decided to bring learning to the very edge of human discovery – and, with a bit of luck – the opportunity to bring others with us to peer over that edge. As a for profit company these experiences for the most part have been behind a pay wall. That changes today. Today, I am exhilarated…
The 2018-2019 year was the beginning of expanded international growth for Magnitude. We kicked the fiscal year off in San Francisco that July receiving an Innovation Award in STEM education at the ISS R&D conference. August had us joining a NASA contingent to Puerto Rico for university outreach. A partnership was launched in Germany with CodeDoor, and our South African NGO partner i-Innovate continued to reach underserved communities. Along the way we picked up 3…
Look Ahead: ExoLab NEXT As we mentioned at the beginning of the month, we have some exciting announcements to make. We would like to continue to extend access to space for students, researchers, and citizen scientists all over the world. Today we are excited to announce ExoLab: NEXT. An open source hardware initiative for anyone that would like to construct their lab to connect with the ExoLab network of science laboratories. The current form factor…
I love mission patches. As a memento of a project there is nothing cooler than mission patches! The 2020-2021 season was extraordinary for Magnitude in that we acquired a number of mementos from this flight. When your payload is launched in most space capsules, they do not have a return journey. While there are several ways to get to the International Space Station, there is currently only one way to get experiments back to earth….
2021-2022 was an extraordinary period for Magnitude.io filled with both promise and uncertainty. While the pandemic was raging, our work continued on. Great partners helped us redefine what these moments meant for learners around the world. ExoLab-9 launched aboard the SpaceX-23 cargo resupply spacecraft on 29 August 2021 along with 2,200 kg of payload to the International Space Station. ExoLab-9 carried Trifolium pratense (red clover) with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria Rhizobia leguminosarum for the second time…
In honor of our co-founder, I am pleased to announce the 2024 So Fun Scholarship will open on 21 June. Last year we had applicants from 6 countries, with awardees across 3 age groups. The scholarship program is in memory of the inspirational work of education leader and co-founder of Magnitude.io, Tony Fun Tong So whose middle name was literally “Fun.” Three $500-awards will be granted this year. Awards will be given, one for each…
Welcome to a month-long celebration of our 10th anniversary! During the month of June we’ll reflect on our last 10 years, showcase some of our projects, announce some cool new initiatives, and collectively have a deep look toward the future. When Tony and I started Magnitude.io in the summer of 2013 our hope was to create a global experience. We’ve done this by bringing learning moments right to the edge of discovery. It took almost…
Over the last few days we have been able to share just a few of our International partners and NGOs. None of this could be possible if we could not get our experiments to space! In addition to the launch vehicles (Cygnus, Dragon) required to get us there, today we’d like to express our gratitude to two institutions that without them, none of this would be a reality: The International Space Station National Laboratory, and…
