To this end, the students learned about the space station, built models and wrote essays explaining why the name they suggested was appropriate
Artist's rendering of the harmonic component. The component, surrounded by a yellow circle, in front of Destiny Lab. illustration. NASA.
Since it was designed and built for the space station, the American component has been known as Node 2. Now, thanks to high school students from all over the US, it will be called "Harmonic".
The name was chosen as part of a competition between about 2,200 students from kindergarten to high school in 32 states in the US. As part of the competition, the students were asked to learn all the possible details about the space station, build a scale model and write an essay explaining their proposal for a component that will serve as the central node of the scientific laboratories .
Six different teams chose the name of the winner. A team of educators, engineers, scientists and NASA leaders chose the name because it symbolizes the spirit of international cooperation accompanying the space station, as well as the specific role of the component designed to connect the components of the international partners. The component is scheduled to be launched later this year on the Atlantis shuttle as part of the STS mission -120.
"The component will allow all the international partners to connect their experiments, so it's great that the students realized that harmony is an important thing in space cooperation," says Bill Gerstenmeier, NASA's deputy director for space operations. Harmony will join three other American components that have already been named - Destiny Laboratory, Mineal Air Quest and the Unity component. This is the first component to be named by someone outside of NASA.
For information on the NASA website
