Audio collage begins.

LISA LAMB

We have kind of a family story that we like to tell… How did… this little education institution, in the – you know – rural, high desert, Southern California get connected with NASA.

BOB HAROLDSSON

They get the teachers and in schools and stuff plugged in, and they actually operate one of our antennas and gather science. And that’s pretty cool.

STEVE LEVIN

Students are learning science by doing real science.

JENNIFER WEIS

I really liked… being able to operate the radio telescope. Usually, you hear scientists with big names doing big things like that.

SARAH DUDJAK

People notice if you’re really passionate about something. And, if you love it, that’s more than enough.

Audio collage ends

STEVE LEVIN

My name is Steve Levin, and I’m the project scientist for Juno, as well as the lead scientist for the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope project…

NARRATOR

We heard from Steve in our last episode, where he talked about his role studying Jupiter through the Juno mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

STEVE LEVIN

GAVRT, the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope project, is a project where we take a large radio telescope at… the DSN’s Goldstone complex, and essentially let school kids run the telescope. So, from their classroom – with the support of their teacher and the support of the Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley – schoolkids, over the internet, take over control of the 34-meter radio telescope and do real science with it.

NARRATOR

We spoke about the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in an earlier episode this season called “Follow the Sun.” It’s one of NASA’s three Deep Space Network complexes worldwide. One of Goldstone’s retired – but still operational – antennas is a key feature of GAVRT. It’s used in a similar manner as an optical telescope, but sees radio waves as opposed to visible light.

STEVE LEVIN

…It’s a partnership between JPL, and the Lewis center, and NASA, and the Deep Space Network, and – of course – a lot of schools across the country, and – indeed – across the world, in which the kids need to get something educational out of it, and the community needs to get some science contribution out of it. And those two things work together really well… synergistically, because it’s very valuable for the kids to know that they’re making a real scientific contribution.

The GAVRT project, in many ways, is my favorite project. It’s sort of a shoestring operation, but everybody is involved with it because they love it.

NARRATOR

GAVRT is loved by many. It’s a favorite citizen science effort for the space communications and navigation community at NASA, one that always impresses scientists and students alike.

NASA helps fund the GAVRT project and maintain its antenna. Students involved in GAVRT conduct radio astronomical observations – observing natural objects like Jupiter and the Sun ­– while collecting tangible data that complements NASA missions and research.

STEVE LEVIN

It’s a lot of fun for the scientists to work with the kids. I probably talk to GAVRT students, maybe once a month over Zoom or in their classroom… Scientific papers have been published using GAVRT data with contribution from GAVRT students.

NARRATOR

Bob Haroldsson at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, certainly finds it rewarding.

BOB HAROLDSSON

What’s really cool is, I’m also supporting the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope program. And that is really awesome stuff right there. JPL and NASA, they partner up with the Lewis Center down in Apple Valley, and they get the teachers and in schools and stuff plugged in, and they actually operate one of our antennas and gather science. And that’s pretty cool.

STEVE LEVIN

Students are learning science by doing real science.

NARRATOR

In today’s episode of this Deep Space Network season, we’ll chat with Lisa Lamb, who runs the GAVRT program and is president and CEO of the Lewis Center, named after San Bernadino congressman Jerry Lewis, who helped found the center. We’ll also hear from two students who participated in GAVRT, one locally and the other across the country.

The Invisible Network theme.

I’m Danny Baird. This is “The Invisible Network.”

…

A collage of historical audio

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade…

NEIL ARMSTRONG(Apollo 11)

That’s one small step for man…

COMMENTATOR(Voyager Launch)

We have ignition, and we have lift off!

CHILD FROM VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORDS

Hello from the children of planet Earth…

COMMENTATOR(Cassini Launch)

Three… two… one… and liftoff, of the Cassini spacecraft…

COMMENTATOR(Perseverance Landing)

Touchdown confirmed, Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars…

Theme music fades.

…

LISA LAMB

My name is Lisa Lamb and I’m the president/CEO for the Lewis Center for Educational Research…

The Lewis Center is a really fun organization to be part of. Probably the most prominent thing we do is we operate two K-12, award winning charter schools in Southern California. So, one in Apple Valley, which is the high desert area of Southern California, and the other is in San Bernardino. So, one is more rural, and one is… downtown, urban…

So, I wear the hat as a superintendent for our schools… then the other hats that I get to wear are very diverse. So, in addition to our charter schools, the Lewis Center also operates global and local programs… GAVRT is our longest standing and most prominent global program…

We are currently in 44 states, 14 countries, and three U.S. territories.

NARRATOR

So, what is GAVRT?

LISA LAMB

GAVRT is a radio astronomy project that allows students from anywhere in the world… to operate a 34-meter telescope out at Goldstone. And they can see the telescope move. We have cameras on it. And they’re able to join in one of four missions that we’re doing currently.

So those are:

Jupiter Quest. We work directly with the Juno mission to Jupiter and collect data on Jupiter… That’s our oldest program. We’ve been doing that one for about 22 years.

They can do Black Hole Patrol. So, they are looking at black holes and monitoring them over time. So, that’s a really great one for students who are going to be engaging over a length of time, like a class that operates weekly…

And then we have [the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] (SETI). They’re looking for signals that could be a candidate [for] extraterrestrial intelligence out there. And that’s a really fun one, because they can do that live through a GAVRT session and they can also access that data and look back at what others have done and see if they can find some similarities between them…

And then our fourth campaign is our new citizen science campaign called solar patrol. And this one is really great, because… for the first time… it will just be open to any citizen scientists. You don’t have to be affiliated with a school, or a museum, or a Girl Scout or Boy Scout club, or anything like that. We’ll be doing open sessions where anybody from anywhere can join… And we’ll be looking at space weather.

NARRATOR

The four campaigns rely on NASA subject matter experts as they gather data for NASA science or for other space research.

LISA LAMB

We have a scientist who’s linked to each one of the campaigns. So, let me take Jupiter Quest as an example, because our lead GAVRT scientist, Dr. Steve Levin is in charge of that.

STEVE LEVIN

You know, I wear many hats. In addition to being the science lead for Jupiter [Juno and Jupiter Quest]. I’m also the science lead for the GAVRT’s SETI campaign. So that’s “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” We’re using the radio telescope to look for techno signatures – for radio signals of intelligent origin – coming from other stars. And, in addition to being – of course – an interesting science project, and making a science contribution, that’s a really valuable education project.

One of the ways I like to think about that is, when I talk to teachers about – you know – how they do their job, and what’s important, one of the things they often talk about is student engagement. It’s a really important thing to get the students interested and engaged in the class.

Well, if I go to your classroom, and I talked to the students, and I say, “Today, we’re going to look for life in outer space.” I have 100% engagement. Every single student is interested.

And by putting together a program where they are both actually doing something meaningful, contributing to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ­– and learning in the process ­– we can have students have fun, do something valuable, and learn some science and math along the way.

NARRATOR

And how did the Lewis Center get involved in radio astronomy?

LISA LAMB

We have this ­– kind of a family story ­– that we like to tell… How did… this little education institution, in the rural, high desert, Southern California get connected with NASA.

So, the way that it worked was our founder, Rick Piercy, was a kindergarten teacher and then administrator, and he had a young astronauts program. And so, he was looking for ways to engage the kids and through some of his research, he found out that NASA was decommissioning two of the radio telescopes out at Goldstone…

He had never done anything with radio astronomy ­– [with a] background as a kindergarten teacher and a park ranger. And so, he just wanted kids to get excited about the sky and different things that they could see. And so, he decided to just call up NASA and say, “Hey, can we use those for the school. I have a school ­– I have a, you know, program – and we really like to use one of those radio telescopes…”

And so, they connected him with Dr. Mike Klein. Dr. Klein was very beloved at JPL and throughout NASA, and Rick and Mike just really hit it off.

And so, Rick had an idea – you know ­– at that time, you could just drive out to Goldstone and it wasn’t as secured as it is now. And so, the story goes that he took a pickup truck, because he was thinking that he was going to pick this radio telescope up and bring it on back to the school…

The scale of what a pickup truck would look like next to a 34-meter telescope? Clearly, that was not going to work.

This was 22, 23 years ago. He found a way ­– even back then – just basically using a phone line, and one single computer on how to get kids all over the world connected to the radio telescope via that one phone line…

You know, it’s gotten a lot easier over time, but that’s how that goes. Rick was always all about: it has to be real education for the students; and Mike was also adamant that it needed to be real science contribution for NASA. And so GAVRT has always been those two things.

We have been presented many opportunities. But if they don’t present real learning opportunities for students and result in real data and real, new knowledge for NASA, then GAVRT doesn’t do that project. It has to be both.

NARRATOR

And those opportunities aren’t limited to students with an existing interest in STEM, or those in gifted and talented programs.

LISA LAMB

It’s not always your A plus students – right? – who really light up… One funny story:

So, we had a parent call upset, because her son was staying up all night long, and just – you know – on his computer in his bedroom all night…

And she’s like, “Yeah, he’s doing this thing called SETI? What is this ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence?”

And so, he was looking for candidates. They can go online, and they were studying SETI in school. And so, he just was sure he was going to find E.T., and he was, you know, working at it every single night.

And of course – you know – for me, I had to laugh and be like, “Oh, that’s awesome.”

She was like, “No, Miss Lamb. He needs to sleep.”

I said, “I agree, but I think it’s so great that he just has that fire.”

But it’s not the typical students, right? That was not an honors student or somebody you would think that would be targeted for a career in astrophysics. It was just a very average student.

NARRATOR

While GAVRT has yet to find any evidence of extraterrestrial life, it has found extraordinary ways to engage with students. It seems especially good at captivating students traditionally overlooked by STEM programs.

LISA LAMB

We have a GAVRT intro video that we did a couple years ago, and almost all of the students that are shown in that video are special education, because I think that our work with GAVRT really interests them. Because it’s authentic, right? It’s not textbook.

They’re looking for something that’s really interesting. They get to work with some really great professionals from NASA and… They excel here.

And, maybe for the first time they’re doing something so significant. Like, NASA is allowing them to operate this 34 meter-telescope and like, trust them to do that. And – I don’t know – it just changes everything for them.

NARRATOR

For most students that get involved: GAVRT is a hands-on way to learn about space science and exploration. For other students, it becomes a passion.

LISA LAMB

We have a student who was actually just featured through the Juno campaign. Her name is Sarah Dudjak. And she is out [in] Florida and she spent her whole… COVID quarantine ­– collecting Jupiter data… with our operator Nancy Kreuser-Jenkins.

…

SARAH DUDJAK

My name is Sarah Dudjak and I’m from Tampa. I was born in Pittsburgh and… I go to school at University of Pittsburgh, and I chose geology.

I want to keep researching [the] planets within solar system, and especially maybe extrasolar planets. And I also really liked magnetic fields.

I’m definitely going to get at least a Master’s, maybe even a PhD because I really want to conduct research. I really like researching.

NARRATOR

Outside of school:

SARAH DUDJAK

Yeah, I do a lot of art. I play volleyball. I like to collect rocks and look for fossils at my grandma’s house.

And I do a lot of amateur astronomy observing. So, I have a telescope and my dad has a telescope and we’ll go look at stars outside.

NARRATOR

During her high school years in Florida, Sarah got involved with GAVRT.

SARAH DUDJAK

So, one of my science teachers… He had a poster on – it was just like a sheet of paper – and it said “telescope club” on his window. And I was like, “Telescope club! That is exactly what I want to do…”

And I thought it was just going to be like the telescopes I used to observe optically, and it so was not. And I had never interacted with radio telescopes, or even really knew what they were before this.

So, I saw telescope club, and I was like, “Sign me up!”

NARRATOR

For someone already interested in astronomy, GAVRT was a welcome challenge for Sarah.

SARAH DUDJAK

There’s a lot of moving parts ­– obviously ­– on the telescopes, and even more so that you would think through a screen. So, you’d have to learn how to do the different maneuvers for the different types of sources that you’re reading.

And so, if you’re reading Jupiter, you have to do a couple more on a different telescope. But if you’re reading a black hole… you would do less procedures on another telescope. So, you have to really get yourself familiarized with the different telescopes.

NARRATOR

Sarah participated in a few of GAVRT’s concentration areas before settling on Jupiter and the Juno mission.

SARAH DUDJAK

So, the black hole patrol was pretty much what everybody started off with because it’s pretty accessible… but I did a lot of Juno synchrotron radiation scans, which is scanning Jupiter.

And that’s a little less available, so I would do it at some weird times… I did my senior research project on Jupiter and its radiation… All throughout quarantine, I would… wake up really early and poor Miss Nancy – the lady I worked with at GAVRT ­– had to get up too, really early – earlier than me, because she’s in California…

My research was monitoring the Jovian synchrotron radiation emissions in relation to the spacecraft, Juno, that’s currently up there… I would take the data that I took over quarantine… and I put it together… and add it to the data pool of what was already out there and corroborated it.

NARRATOR

Sarah’s work with Juno data has really informed her decision to pursue a STEM education.

SARAH DUDJAK

GAVRT has pretty much shaped my academic and professional career. It’s really exactly what I want to do. And I had no idea what I wanted to do before GAVRT. I knew I was interested in astronomy, but the opportunity really made me realize what I wanted to do with my life, which is be a research scientist…

I was just doing it for fun, doing it after school a few days a week, and then it turned into something that I really loved and really like to be around.

NARRATOR

Now, Sarah is something of an ambassador for GAVRT, encouraging others to get involved.

SARAH DUDJAK

You can do it too. It is not as daunting and as complicated as it seems… A lot of people see the scientific community – especially at NASA ­–…as, like, really scary. And there’s no way I’m ever going to infiltrate that. But… people notice if you’re really passionate about something. And, if you love it, that’s more than enough.

…

JENNIFER WEIS

My name is Jennifer Weis and I’m from Apple Valley, California… I go to school at a local community college called Victor Valley College… So, I decided to do a double major, one in humanities and one in STEM. So, my majors are English and math.

NARRATOR

Jennifer is another student Lisa recommended I speak with.

JENNIFER WEIS

I love art. I love literature. I like doing – Okay, it’s really weird – I do like STEM and I like humanities together. So, when I tell people I can do like math, and then I can go do art too. They get a little weirded out, but I like doing both. And I actually used to be a ballerina dancer… So, there’s like, a lot of hobbies I have.

NARRATOR

As for Jennifer’s participation in GAVRT:

JENNIFER WEIS

It was actually an accident that I got involved. As a kid, I was never really one for STEM. So, looking at GAVRT in science, I was kind of like, “Maybe I don’t want to do it.”

But as I was doing my schedule, there was nothing really for me to go into in high school, and the only option I had was the GAVRT program. And once I got in there, I started getting more involved and I actually learned to love the program a lot. And that I found I do like STEM…

There were a couple areas of research… that I contributed to the most. One was doing black hole patrols on the radio telescope, where we scan a piece of the sky, and we’d write down all the info the graph would tell us, and we’d send it up… And the second program I was part of was SETI…

I really liked… being able to operate the radio telescope. Usually, you hear scientists with big names doing big things like that. But ­– just as a high school student – being able to sit in the basement of my technology building and type in buttons on my laptop, and all of a sudden, this huge telescope would move, and you get to look at a different part of the sky was truly amazing, because not very many high school students get to do that. And I was just lucky to be in a school that could.

NARRATOR

GAVRT also opened unique opportunities for her as a member of her school’s Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, or JROTC.

JENNIFER WEIS

In my senior year, the government let out a notice that they wanted 10 Air Force units to convert into Space Force, as – kind of like ­– a little tester to see if we can get more Space Force programs, because that’s a new branch of the military. So what helped us get from Air Force to Space Force was [that] we already had a lot of GAVRT, and NASA, and JPL within our small little high school… So when we sent that up, it helped us with getting picked to become part of the Space Force.

NARRATOR

Without GAVRT, Jennifer doesn’t necessarily think that her interest in STEM would have been nurtured in the same way.

JENNIFER WEIS

As a kid, I would – you know – find adding two plus three was easy, writing an essay was easy. But once we got higher, and the curriculum – especially in math ­– got more difficult, I wasn’t really enjoying it as much.

So, STEM really didn’t fit well with me, because I didn’t like the challenge. So going into GAVRT, I kind of had a negative connotation on it, but as I put in the time and the effort, and I got to see things we did with numbers, and then we took those numbers, put it on a big screen and visualized what we were doing: that really helped me grow as a person and realize what kind of learner I was. And I was able to help myself with learning new concepts – especially in math ­because I would take those numbers and then I put it on like a little screen or a graph, and I’d visualize it there. And it helped me understand the concept.

NARRATOR

Jennifer offers this advice for students curious about programs like GAVRT, but nervous to try them out:

JENNIFER WEIS

So, I would say: before you judge a program and decide whether or not it’s right for you, to go in and test out that program a little bit ­– maybe a month or two ­– because it really takes time before you’re able to realize if you like it or not. Again, you’re not going to get things the first time… But if you just give up before you even started, then you don’t know what you could have achieved.

…

The Invisible Network theme.

NARRATOR

What makes GAVRT unique, even among other hands-on STEM programs facilitated by NASA, is the chance to contribute to real scientific inquiry. That’s the benefit of GAVRT and NASA citizen science.

Students can participate in the same hard-won joys earned by scientists after years of study and hard work. There’s nothing abstract about it. You’re using a real antenna to perform real science.

LISA LAMB

The biggest win for us is that students can use GAVRT as a tool, and it helps them just get curious, right? And also, just feel empowered to do something that they never thought that they could do. Or just open a world – open some doors to them that they may not have considered.

…

LAURANCE FAUCONNET

Hello! I’m Laurance Fauconnet, outreach lead for the DSN at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

If you’d like to learn more about the GAVRT program, visit gavrt.lewiscenter.org/. That’s G-A-V-R-T dot L-E-W-I-S Center dot org. The program is entirely free. All you need to participate is a laptop and a connection to the internet.

We even have online trainings for teachers interested in getting their students involved with GAVRT. For details on teacher trainings, email the GAVRT mission control team at M-C at L-C-E-R dot org. That’s M-C at L-C-E-R dot org.

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NARRATOR

Thank you for listening. Do you want to connect with us? The Invisible Network team is collecting questions about NASA’s Deep Space Network from listeners like you! We’re putting together a panel of NASA experts from across the Space Communications and Navigation community to answer your questions.

If you would like to participate, navigate over to NASA SCaN on Twitter or Facebook and ask your question using the hashtag AskSCaN. That’s @ NASA SCaN, N-A-S-A-S-C-A-N, on social media, with the hashtag AskSCaN, A-S-K-S-C-A-N.

This Deep Space Network-focused season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in summer of 2022. Developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the Deep Space Network is managed by JPL with funding and strategic oversight from the Space Communications and Navigation, or SCaN, program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

This podcast is produced by SCaN at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with episodes written and recorded by me, Danny Baird. Editorial support is provided by Katherine Schauer and JPL’s Laurance Fauconnet. Our public affairs officer is Lora Bleacher.

Special thanks to Fall 2021 interns Julia Adde and Nate Thomas, Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, and all those who have lent their time, talent, and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

For transcripts of episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN. For more NASA podcast offerings, visit NASA.gov/podcasts. There, you can check out “On a Mission,” the official podcast of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.