A 17-year-old British student, Miles Solomon,
spotted an error in NASA’s data while working on a school physics
project. What’s more, the teenager figured out that radiation sensors on
the International Space Station (ISS) were not working properly. The
sensors were actually capturing “false data”.
Once he found the error, Solomon emailed NASA, which said
it “appreciated” the feedback and even invited him to help fix the
problem.
Solomon’s Tapton Secondary School in Sheffield was taking
part in a project from Institute for
Research in Schools (IRIS) which
provided the students with real scientific data from NASA’s radiation
readings. The measurements were of radiation levels from British
astronaut Tim Peak’s stint on the ISS in December 2015, taken every 4
seconds. The students were encouraged to look for anomalies and
promising patterns.
When he first got the readings, Miles right away had a plan. What he spotted is that on occasions when the sensors
didn’t detect any radiation, they instead recorded a negative reading of
-1. As you cannot have a negative for energy, Solomon and his teacher
got in touch with NASA.
"It's pretty cool", said Miles. "You can tell your friends, I just emailed Nasa and they're looking at the graphs that I've made."It turned out the teen noticed an error
that NASA didn’t fully see for 15 months. The space scientists said they
did actually know of the error’s existence but thought it happened once
or twice a year rather than many times a day.
The discovery of the error was welcomed
by NASA and IRIS, which created the opportunity to get “real science in
the classroom”. They hope this kind of cooperation can inspire students
to become scientists.
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