NASA Partners with Dublin Public Schools for Space Exploration Program

Two lucky Dublin students will have the opportunity to experience zero gravity and the thrill of space travel thanks to a unique partnership announced today between NASA and Dublin’s public school system.

The program will involve a year-long evaluation process to identify and train two student astronauts who will graduate with a ticket to ride – to the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere.

This unique opportunity, made possible due to the success of the engineering programs already in place in Dublin schools, is remarkable given the selectivity of the NASA astronaut program: “NASA selects astronauts from a diverse pool of applicants with a wide variety of backgrounds. From the thousands of applications received, only a few are chosen for the intensive Astronaut Candidate training program. Including the ‘Original Seven’, only 330 astronauts have been selected to date.” (source: NASA website).

Details on how to apply:

In order to be eligible, students must apply no later than midnight on April 1, 2014. Application forms will be available at 12:01am on April 2, 2014.

(Seriously, if you want to learn more about what it is really like to work at NASA, check out this interview: NASA Scientist Amy Mainzer Searches Beyond the Sky for Interesting Questions. And even though Dublin students won’t be blasting off into space, they have lots of opportunities to explore the thrill of science through science, technology, engineering and math programs through K-12 programs.)