A centerpiece to the Space DaySM program is the Student Signatures in Space® (S3) project, which gives elementary and middle school students the opportunity to send their personal signatures into space. Lockheed Martin and NASA have partnered to present the S3 program.
The goal of the Student Signatures in Space program is to pique students' interest in space by getting them "personally" involved in a space shuttle mission.
Participating schools are sent giant posters for their students to sign on Space Day (held annually on the first Friday of each May), along with supporting educational materials and program memorabilia. Participants return the posters to Lockheed Martin, and the signatures are digitally captured from the posters. NASA then includes the signatures in the manifest of a U.S. space shuttle mission. The mission selected for S3 is usually one that is launched in the fall of that year's project. This ensures that most schools are in session during the mission, providing another great teaching opportunity for educators from participating schools as the students follow "their" mission. When school resumes in the fall, S3 participants receive ongoing emails of space-related lesson plans and S3 mission status reports and teaching information. After the mission, the posters are returned to the schools for display, along with an official NASA certification verifying that the signatures flew in space, as well as a photo of the crew that took the signatures up.
The first Student Signatures in Space project was held to celebrate Space Day 1997 when more than 96,000 signatures from over 220 U.S. elementary schools traveled aboard Shuttle-Mir docking mission STS-86 in September 1997. Since then, the program has included thousands of schools. To date, more than five million signatures have flown on various missions, including STS-95, the historic shuttle mission that returned Senator John Glenn to space.
In 1999, the program included 548 schools. Signatures went to space aboard STS-103, the exciting Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.
Space Day 2000 included another 540 schools, with International Space Station assembly mission STS-92 taking participants' signatures to space.
For Space Day 2001, the signatures flew on STS-108, another Station assembly mission, which launched in December. This mission marked the two millionth signature flown through the S3 program.
Signatures collected in the 2002 program were flown on mission STS-113, which launched in November, 2002.
Signatures for the 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 programs were collected following the tragic Columbia accident in 2003, held until NASA returned its Space Shuttle fleet to flight, and then flown on mission STS-117 in June 2007.
The 2007 program signatures flew aboard mission STS-120, which traveled to the International Space Station in the fall of 2007.
Schools are selected for participation in a variety of ways. Many are selected by representatives from Lockheed Martin or Space Day Partner companies throughout the world. These representatives "sponsor" one or more of their local schools, often providing additional Space Day activities to support the signature festivities. Sponsors conduct such events as space trivia contests and spelling bees, field trips, guest speakers, poster and essay contests, hands-on displays, space-related experiments and lesson plans, model rocket building and launchings, and countless other events. School names are also often submitted by representatives from various NASA centers and international space agencies, as well as representatives from the U.S. Congress and Senate. Many schools hear about the project on their own and sign up by contacting the S3 program coordinator directly (see sign-up information below). The goal is to ensure that all states are represented in the program each year. Thus, there are also a few schools that are randomly selected each year to cover states from which only a small number of school names were submitted.
There is no cost to schools to participate in Student Signatures in Space. All costs (including shipping both ways) are paid by Lockheed Martin.
Having signatures flown on the Space Shuttle is a rare treat as space is extremely limited on each mission. Space requirements limit us to only approximately 500 schools per year, and we try to sign up as many schools as possible that have never participated before. Once we reach our quota, we create a wait list for participation the following year. Thus, to ensure that as many students as possible are able to participate, the following participation rules apply:
- Schools are allowed to participate only once every six years (this ensures that students have cycled through the elementary school before the school can participate again, thus ensuring a new batch of students every time a school participates). Past participants that are eligible to participate in the 2008 program are schools that participated in the 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 or 2002 programs. Click here for a list of past participants.
- Schools must include their entire school in the project (i.e., it would not be fair to have to turn down a school that wanted all 1,200 of their students to participate because the slot had been taken by a school that was having only one class of 15 students participate)
- Home schools may participate as an organized local group (i.e., rather than having the two students who make up the "Smith family home school" take up the slot for an entire school, the Smith family can register their local home school group/organization and participate with all other home school families within that organization)
- Scouting troops/packs/dens may participate as part of their regional council group
Although S3 lesson plans are geared more toward elementary and middle schools, the S3 program is open to all schools, including high schools.
Sign-up deadline was February 29 for the 2008 program.
If you are a school sponsor and would like to be listed as the school's sponsor, please also include the following information:
- Your name
- Your job title
- Your company's name (if Lockheed Martin, please identify which LM company)
- Your work mailing address
- Your work phone number
- Your email address
For more information about the Student Signatures in Space program please send an email to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
