Get ready for splashdown! NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission is targeting a return to Earth on Sunday, May 2, in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Resilience, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 8:35 p.m. Saturday, May 1, to begin the journey home. Watch the landing live on NASA TV.

Bring this teachable moment to your students with this parachute design activity to safely land an eggstronaut! Students use the engineering design process to construct, test and analyze a prototype parachute designed to slow the descent of an egg and minimize the force of impact when landing, allowing the "eggstronaut" to land safely.

The All Girls Big Bang Robotics Team, comprising four girls from Chandler and Mesa, recently came out on top in a regional tournament with the Champions Award and went on to capture a state award for best robot design.

The team, one of several by the Chandler nonprofit Education Empowers, won first place in the regional FIRST Lego League Challenge, qualifying the girls for participation in the state tournament.

Big Bang team members Brooke Sanders, Tara Tilak Nukala, Advaitha Vemuri and Saba Mendoza were guided by lead coaches Elaina Ashton of Arizona State University and Robab Shakiba of Intel.

Patagonia Elementary has been collaborating with a local arts education nonprofit called the Mat Bevel Company to launch a new afterschool “Creative STEM Club” which combines lessons in STEM with the arts. The Mat Bevel Company was in the midst of producing a ready-to-use, multimedia STEAM curriculum for the program when COVID-19 struck. As a result, they posted The Universe Within lessons online so that schools, afterschool programs and summer camps can take advantage of this super creative STEM curriculum for free. More online lessons will be posted in the coming weeks.

▶ Take a Look at The Universe Within

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant valued at over $1 million to the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), in partnership with SciTech Institute and the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC). The grant will be used to foster engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning and social interaction for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

To accomplish the project’s goals, custom professional development education and evidenced-based programming is being developed for practitioners working in informal STEM learning institutions such as museums, science and nature centers, zoos, and aquariums. The first phase, running through February 2023, is part of a three-phase longitudinal study. Initial informal STEM learning collaborators include the Arizona Museum of Natural History, i.d.e.a. Museum, Pueblo Grande Museum and Arizona Science Center.