03.01
Monday, March 01, 2010
Sony announced a joint venture today with Intel and Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation called “The Rocket Project,” a “Mavericks in the Classroom” STEM Education program supporting Mavericks’ Clotho astrobiology research program.
In this project, eight selected high school science students will be given Sony VAIO® CW series laptops to design, build and launch a research sounding rocket as part of the Mavericks Clotho team.
“Sony products empower and inspire consumers to make the seemingly impossible possible,” Alberto Escobedo, Director of Brand Messaging at Sony said in the release.
“The Rocket Project is giving a group of highly dedicated science students the rare opportunity to take their ideas beyond the surface of the Earth and actually reach for the stars,” Escobedo added. “We could not be prouder of the role Sony VAIO technology is playing in making their ideas come to life.”
The “Mavericks in the Classroom” STEM Education program will provide the students a graduate level accelerated rocket engineering course, taught by Thomas M. Atchison, Chairman of Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation.
Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 educational foundation which combines raising public awareness through the inspiration and productivity of competitive challenges, with the leverage of social networking to provide resources for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and research programs that drive civilian space exploration.
“The laptops from Sony and Intel have more computational processing power than some of the first spacecraft to reach the Moon,” Atchison said in the release. “But can a Sony VAIO laptop be used to design, build, test, and launch a rocket? That is what this extraordinary group of high school students is going to find out, and I am very excited to give them the unique hands-on experience of building something capable of blasting off into space.”
The rocket will be 25 feet tall when completed with a weight in excess of 500 pounds and will be capable of reaching the upper portions of the mesosphere ( 395,000 ft above the surface of the earth, more than 75,000 ft into space). A VAIO Z-Series laptop with its 13.1″ screen and Intel® Core i5 Processor with Turbo Boost will provide the brains for rocket while a VAIO F-Series laptop with its 16.4″ screen and Intel Core i7 Processor with Turbo Boost will serve as mission control for the launch.
“The processing power of the Intel Core i7 processor is so great that one of the only limiting factors to innovation is imagination,” said Erik Reid, Mobile Client Marketing Director, Intel Corporation. “The students in The Rocket Project demonstrate that America’s scientists of tomorrow will take our technology to new heights.”
