PRESS RELEASE: "Look up Mr President!" - ISS-Above encourages students to do the same

"Look up Mr President!" - ISS-Above encourages students to do the same.

On 10/19/15 at 7:14pm EST, The White House will host its annual astronomy event, just as the international space station flies overhead.

How do we know that it will be at this exact point in time?

Liam Kennedy, founder of the ISS-Above explains:

“I created the ISS-Above to tell you when the International Space Station is going to fly overhead. It’s more often than you think as the ISS orbit takes it around the world every 92 minutes. It might be in your skies 6-8 times per day. It’s a small device that hooks up to your TV, giving you mission control for the ISS from your home, school or office.

“Tomorrow night it will be timed just perfectly so that the President can see it from the South Lawn of the White House as he chats to Bill Nye and students, engineers, scientists and innovators gathered for the evening.

“It’s great that the POTUS is encouraging students to engage with astronomy and make their own discoveries. With the ISS-Above, we’re trying to do exactly the same thing: fire the imagination of the nation’s youth and inspire the next generation of leading scientists who will take us to Mars and beyond. The device - which has a high-definition live video stream from the Space Station external cameras - allows people to sit and watch what the astronauts see when they look down at the Earth. It’s something that encourages you to engage with the Space Station, our only human outpost in space, every day of the year.

“We’ve invested so much in the Space Station - it’s the world’s most expensive man-made object - but not enough people are aware it’s there. What it’s for and what the astronauts are working on all day. Our hope is that with a little encouragement from the President, schools across this nation will invest in an ISS-Above so that more of our students ask questions about their place in the universe.”

For a toolkit for the event, click here.

-ends

The White House Astronomy Night is now in its sixth year and is intended to inspire the next generation of scientists. https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/10/15/looking-stars-inspiration-white-house-astronomy-night

ISS is the world’s most expensive man-made object (currently standing at $160B): http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-expensive-man-made-object/

About ISS-Above

Liam is the inventor/programmer of the ISS-Above, a single board computer device (based on a Raspberry Pi) that presents information about the ISS orbit and when the ISS will be. This device has been shipped to more than 1.000 locations around the world.  The ISS-Above was featured as a Poster presentation at the 2015 ISS R&D Conference www.issconference.org  “ISS-Above:  Using a Single Board Computer to Raise Public Awareness of the Space Station”. ISS-Above started as a fun project for Liam’s grandchildren, got funded through Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1385270522/iss-above after lots of requests from people wanting one. Today, there’s thousands in homes, offices and schools. More at www.issabove.com