Ultimate Coding Careers with NASA & Minecraft

Hi everyone I’m Lyla Bulman from the Minecraft Education team coming in from Redmond Washington thanks for tuning in this week we are celebrating Computer Science Education week and today we will be talking all about coding and space exploration which is just the coolest combination now before we get started

Remember you can share your questions in the chat throughout the event our friends from Minecraft and the NASA stem team are here and they will be responding to as many as they can and finally take a seat get ready because we will be starting soon in the meantime we

Have a fun challenge for you grab something to write with because it is pop quiz time in just a moment some onscreen quiz questions are coming to warm us up for the event so Gathering groups or pairs grab a piece of paper and a pen to write your answers and

Share with us in the chat just how many you answered correctly okay let’s do this let the pop quiz Begin Hey He Hey hey Going Hey and hello from moyang studios in Redmond Washington in the United States and welcome to today’s flip event I’m your host Lyla Bulman and I couldn’t be more excited to be here with you all now how many questions did you get right in the pop quiz we would love to know in the

Chat give yourself a Pat in the back or a high five to the person sitting next to you great job on our first ever flip Pop Quiz now let’s give a cheer to all of you here with us tuning in I can see some familiar names and classrooms hello

Hello everyone we are honored to have you here all right it is computer science education week and we are lucky to be joined by an incredible expert the robotics technologist Dr kak abat from NASA’s jet propulsion lab comac will share his Incredible Journey from a 14-year-old dreaming of NASA in Iran to

Now working with the renowned space agency his story promises to ignite the dreams of every student and aspiring space Enthusiast he will also discuss the power of coding in shaping future careers and share more about NASA’s emis missions and finally we’re going to show you how you can start your coding

Journey with Minecraft’s emist missions in our games all right let’s blast off with Dr comak this is shuttle launch control ignition sequence starts t- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 and lift on thank you for that introduction and hello to everyone watching as Leila

Mentioned my name is kamak body and I’m a robotic technologist here at NAS jet popultion laboratory I was born and raised in Iran and as a child I had had a deep Fascination for astronomy and space exploration however I kept that dream private because I was afraid of

Getting mocked or ridiculed by others one pivotal day I saw an interview on live TV featuring an Iranian American NASA director uh who was leading NASA’s Mars exploration program his name was Dr Fus naderi and he was talking about NASA’s twin Rovers opportunity and spirit that had recently landed on Mars

So when I saw him on TV in that moment I instantly found a Beacon of Hope because I told myself if he achieved to reach such Heights I could strive for them too so from that moment forward I decided to openly share my dream of joining NASA

However aside from a few friends and family members who were supportive others looked at me with skepticism some and mocked me and laughed at me and um um I distinctly recall someone suggesting I needed to seek U help from a psychologist to uh wake up from what

They deemed a childish dream and face a reality they argued that I was from Iran a country that had no diplomatic relationship with the US for over four decades so unfortunately for many people even getting a visa to go and visit the US is almost impossible let alone

Working for NASA however instead of accepting that version of reality that ver discouraging version of reality that was presented to me I decided to create my own version of reality so I started journaling but instead of focusing on the past I focused on the future and

Future at Nasa so I started thinking and planning every single step that I needed to take to go from where I was to where I wanted to be at Nasa soon I realized that one of my um biggest challenges was financial situation moving to the US and

Uh studying and living in the US uh is extremely expensive and um I didn’t have the financial means to make that happen so at the age of 17 I started working night shifts at an internet service provider company uh while going to school during the day in

Mornings and I tried hard to save as much as I could and save every penny for my undergrad studies I chose to major in computer engineering because I was fascinated with computers and the power of coding in shaping our Tech driven world so it took me nine years of

Working night shifts and saving every penny until I finally managed to save just enough so I can cover my tuition and living cost for only the first semester in the US so finally um I arrived in the US and started Ed on a student visa and started my Master’s in

Computer engineering at Florida International University one of the first thing that I did upon arriving in the US was reaching out to the same Iranian American NASA director that I saw on TV Dr Fus naderi when I was a child and I wrote him an email I wrote

Him that he had been my role model I wrote him that he had been my source of inspiration throughout all those challenging years and I asked him if he could be my mentor and show me the way to my dream um he did not respond to my

Email uh he was the director for solar system exploration at that time so he was quite busy and he was getting uh many similar requests and email from other students so he didn’t have time to respond to all those those emails so after I didn’t hear back from him I

Wrote him again and again and again so I uh sent him 17 emails to be precise each email written completely differently but with the same message and same request and finally he responded to my 17th email he said comc um let me know next time that you are in Los Angeles I might

Be able to meet with you I was living in Florida at that time so I booked a flight to La for the next day and I responded to him what a coincidence I’m going to be in LA tomorrow so that’s how I finally managed to get to meet with my

Role model and uh we had an hourong meeting and at the end of that meeting he agreed to Mentor me from that moment it took another seven years of hard work a PhD in robotics from seu a postto in CCH that I finally received a full-time job offer from NASA

JPL so yeah it um took almost um two decades to realize my childhood dream and the path wasn’t easy easy but that’s how dreams are dreams are not supposed to be easy so some of you watching might be wondering now that I’m here working in NASA is that the end of my dreaming

Journey the answer is absolutely not I aspired to become an astronaut and actually just recently I was selected as an analog astronaut by NASA to participate in an analog Mission to Mars starting this January so I’m still working toward that dream and I’m well aware that there are thousands tens of

Thousands of applicants who apply to NASA’s astronaut program and NASA usually select only 10 uh candidates so uh I know how hard it is but that doesn’t discourage me from trying here at JPL I work on several projects one of the projects that I’m contributing to is strategic and

Tactical space flight operations for NASA’s perseverance Rover so some of you may already know that perseverance Rover’s main mission objective is to explore planets geology and search for ancient signs of microbial Life on Mars so what I do and what the rest of my team does is that we use a robotic

Arm of perseverance Rover to collect and cash samples of the Martian rocks and regul and we hope to return these samples back to Earth so we can study them extensively and search for signs of life in them so perseverance R is equipped with many sensors and scientific instruments and in order to

Control these scientific instruments we need to write code and create software so we can control these scientific instruments and collect data and measurements that we need another interesting software that is on board the perseverance rare is what we call the autonomous navigation or the autonav so autonav is a system that enables the

Rover to autonomously navigate on the surface of Mars and Traverse the terrain and identify and detect obstacles and Hazards like bro large rocks or rough terrain and chart a safe path around them without relying on direct instructions from Earth so in a sense the the onboard flight software is like

The brains of the Rover and enables the Rover to collect and analyze data on its own and to make decisions on its own and in a in a sense to be smart and just um rely Less on human supervision and human in the loop and be able to Traverse the

Train another projects that I’m currently contributing to is developing high resolution orbital maps and um navigation and perception algorithms that Ena that spacecraft to execute Pinpoint Landing on planetary bodies so um this project can help and support other nasal projects like the Aramis mission to the Moon that aims to land

The first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon within the decade and other projects like Mars sample return mission that aims to land a Lander on Mars and retrieve the samples that we are collecting with perseverance Rover and return them back

To Earth so similar to the perseverance Rover the um Orion um spacecraft or any other spacecraft that is going to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon is equipped with sensors and scientific instruments so we need to write software and code so we can control those

Instruments and we can collect the data and we enable the spacecraft to perform a Pinpoint Landing precisely at the locations that we want them to land the astronaut safely um completely autonomously and without human supervision so you may want to um consider this that when we talking about

Pinpoint Landing on Moon and Mars there is no GPS satellite on on moon and Mars that helps us to localize a spacecraft with respect to the Target Landing site some of you might have seen Space X landing on a barge on the ocean or landing on a Target landing sze at

Kennedy Space Center which is quite impressive but here on Earth we have GPS and the rockets that are going to land on those Landing sites they rely on the GPS satellite as well so they can look at their own location with respect to the G GPS satellite based on the GPS

Signal and look at the Target location and then try to navigate and arrive where they want to go just like how we use our cell phone when you’re driving in a car and you put the destination address in your map app and then it will navigate you to uh the location that you

Want to go on mars or Moon there is no GPS so we don’t have any Global Knowledge of where the spacecraft is with respect to the landing side so how do we localize and how do we pinpoint land is is that we take images with a spacecraft so the spacecraft take images

Of the surface and Compares that to an onboard map and try to match those images with the onboard map just imagine you’re lost in New York City and I give you a picture of Empire State Building and I say go find that so you will look

Around and look at your picture and you try to match your picture with what you see around so that you can arrive at your destination now what is challenging on the surface of the Moon is that at the Moon South Pole which is a Place aramus 3 is going to land the sun

Elevation is only 1 and a half degrees above Horizon and that means that we’re going to have very long Shadows cast on the surface of the Moon so when we are going to land on the moon we need to compare aerial imagery with on board map and try to match that but unfortunately

When we are going to land we don’t have no control at what the time of day we’re going to land we don’t know how the Shadows are going to look so this is going to complicate the whole process of matching down on board imager you’ve been an onboard map and precisely land

Pinpoint land basically at a Target Landing site so this is all the power of coding and software engineering that enables the spacecraft to become smart and make smart decision and land this next generation of RMS astronauts safely on the Sur wow what an incredible story

I’m inspired and I bet all of you feel exactly the same way comak will be back with us in just a few minutes to answer some of your questions but in the meantime I’m I’m going to take a moment to show everyone watching how to start coding with Minecraft and explore the

Artemis missions worlds that we created in collaboration with NASA all right well let’s kick it off uh and welcome to return to the moon and I am going to actually choose keyboard you do have a choice between keyboard and touch so if you’re in an iPad or an iPhone or an

Android or any kind of tablet you would choose touch controls I am on my laptop so I am going to choose keyboard now the second uh choice you have is to choose which coding language you’re going to be using for today’s game blocks are definitely best for beginners

And you definitely only want to choose python if you have coded in Python before or if you’ve already used blocks and you want to try something new in choing Python all right so very first thing and the most important thing in Minecraft coding games is the following

Press C to open code Builder so I’m going to press C to open code Builder and code Builder is how we code in the game so this game supports between one and four players and when all crew members who are playing are logged in you can press go for launch since it’s

Just me I’m going to drag that block over go for launch and press start so we are now ready to begin the game and we have this awesome cinematic that’s when you have like a little video in the game and it’s a cinematic of the SLS going up

In dis space and beginning emis return to the moon and so we wanted to create a game here that actually uh represented what activities astronut do inside of the Orion and that liftoff is super strong six G’s of force and it tells us a little bit about what a gForce is it’s

Six times heavier than your uh on Earth your body feels one G so imagine six times that right now so we can show you how to use a console and that’s what we’re going to do right now it’s our first time so I’m going to press yes so

Yes definitely press yes along with me and we’re going to actually play with the console it’s really important to know how the console works so we’re going to spend some time going through it so I’m going to interact with the console I’m going to look around though

First because it’s super cool so you’ll see here I’m in the Orion I’m in my capsule looking out into space uh I got my other team members down below me below and to my right which everybody has their own console and I’m going to click right here uh with my right click

With that button and it pulls out out which is just a cool thing all right so interacting with that button later we’ll retract the console as well so this is our main screen where we know what we’re doing in the game uh and interacting with the blinking button so we know

We’re ready to proceed so here we are so here’s my console everything I need to know in this game happens on the console so as you see we’re going to be taking a really cool flight around the Moon I’m going to go click on this fidget button

My fidget screen uh while I’m waiting for non-mission critical activities I can check my email or I can turn my lights on and off or just chat with Capcom we have approximately eight minutes to do as many points as possible so I probably not going to be fidgeting

Too much let’s begin our mission critical tasks all right so what’s blinking okay so here on the right are all the tasks I have available for me in the one two and four uh member member games and even though you’re playing by yourself you can definitely play the two

And four Member games but we’re going to do a first uh trial run I’m going to choose this really cool one the objective of my mission is to score as many points as possible before splash down so we’re going to start counting now the little uh trophy icon shows how

Many points my team has earned and we can only get one try per Mission so if you fail that’s okay just choose a new Mission uh and don’t worry if you’re playing on your own obviously uh the computer’s going to join me so I’m going require two members and this little icon

Here shows you how many members required to start a task and now we’re going to get ready to play Let’s interact all right so I’m going to flip the switch as we say and start the mission all right that means now officially we’ve got eight minutes now I’m on the Mars Recon so

I’ve got to capture an image of a potential Mars landing spot all right got the jinny new data has revealed a possible landing spot for our future missions to Mars the Ingenuity Mars helicopter or Jenny is at our disposal now we got to navigate Jenny over to the location and gather additional image

Data got it all right so I’ve got to get Jenny right there at the very top over to the X and take a picture so uh let me count squares here one g to go forward one two three forward I’m going to go down then one two 3 four that looks

Pretty good all right press C to code and my markdown comes up my make code blocks I have to navigate the agent using the Rover block to the green a and take a picture all right so I’m going to move in genuity I’m going to pull that

Block over I’m going to move it to the right moving forward like that and I think I counted four and then I need to move it down uh so let me change that to fuchia button down and by four and then of course do not forget to take your

Picture so that you can set send the data back to Capcom and they can analy analyze the data so here we go did Jenny make it oh incomplete and I can’t do it again I can’t it too many so incomplete now I’ve got to redo the whole thing all right that’s okay we’ll

Try again all about coding is you make mistakes you try forward so let’s do another one I’m G to try this one flip my switch so I’m going to be asteroid mining I had to collect a mineral sample from an asteroid all right they found some asteroid flying near the Earth it

May contain some rare Metals let’s navigate the probe to the mark site all right so I’m going to press C to code this time I’m going to count better I’m gonna go forward one and down down one two three and then forward one all right

I can always go back and look I probably should have done that last time all right let’s go do it so I’m going to move the Rover forward by one and then I’m going to move it down I think by three and then I’m going to move it over by one to the

Right and then I’m going to mine an asteroid and I’m going so slow I’m not gonna make any points oh I got it yes all right at I got one point uh the pro sensors got a large amount of gold and I trace nickel and iron uh two one and we

We are back as you see here we’re shaking up and we are going into landing and we’re about to splash down that was fun coding is super important in space exploration learning just the basics of problem solving and critical thinking really do matter uh and emis space return to the Moon is

Really really a fun way not only to see what life is like on NASA but see look at the types of experiments that our NASA astronauts do it’s all about exploring space colonizing the moon colonizing Mars and learning how to work together in a team a team collaboration and communication

Being a leader are all the different types of skills that you need to be a part of space exploration not just coding which basically means anybody can be someone who tries to work in space exploration hopefully you want to be part of the emis generation too because

You are part of a new generation of explorers astronauts and Visionaries we call that the art generation uh so keep your eyes toward the stars and keep dreaming big you and your team have reached the rank of astronauts thank you everyone okay and now it’s Q&A time and

Comic will be joining to respond to some of your video questions submitted via flip I’m going to leave you with a trailer and comic will meet us on the other Side we are going back to the Moon breaking bear barriers in who and how we get there and launching a new era of space exploration we will need engineers and designers to build Rockets we will need scientists and artists to imagine new ways to live in space we need you the Artemis [Applause] Generation get ready for LIF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 one lift on what advice do you have for students who are interested to pursue a career in robotics or space science well that’s a fantastic question I I would recommend mastering your Basics first so mathematics physics and computer science

And my second advice to you is to engage in Practical and Hands-On activities like internships research opportunities or building robots and trying to program them and make them do different things and um if your robot is not behaving as you expect it to you know spend hours

Just trying to debug your code and understand what is wrong and why the robot is not behaving the way that it should because throughout this process you’re going to learn a lot so these are all the greatest skills that you’re going to need to be successful successful in the field of Robotics and

I also um recommend horning your problem solving skills because the field of a space robotics um often involves complex problems that require innovative solutions so by working on your problem solving skills and trying to think out of the box um you’re going to be more prepared for careers in the space robotics

Field hi NASA my name is Prince and I have a very important question to ask you what are some difficulties that you face while you’re coding for Missions to other planets oh that’s a great question so when we are writing flight offer for um planetary missions there are many

Challenges here I mentioned maybe just a few of them one of the challenges is that we are dealing with limited memory and computational resources on board our spacecraft consider that our spacecraft is equipped with many sensors and scientific instruments that are constantly taking measur measurements and generating data and when we are

Writing software we need to make sure that our software is running as efficiently as possible so that it meets the memory and um computational constraints on board our spacecraft so optimizing our code to run efficiently is one of our biggest challenges another challenge that we face when uh writing

Flight software is that we need to test our flight software and we need to make sure that is free of errors is robust so we run hundreds or thousands of tests on every component and module of the flight software code to make sure that is robust however simulating um the harsh

Extraterrestrial environments accurately here on Earth is a challenging but crucial step that we need to take to make sure that our code is robust and perform nominally when deployed on other planets hi my name is Emily man I’m from gway in the Republic of Ireland my question is

Do astronauts need to know how to code for their missions oh that’s an interesting question and uh I’m not an as astronaut at least not yet but as I mentioned I was recently selected as an analog astronaut so um based on what I know is

That you don’t need to um pass a very difficult coding um question or coding interview you in order to get a job as an astronaut um however astronauts need to actually might need to pick up specific coding languages or coding scills when they’re preparing for their space flight missions because they might

Need to run experiments or do data analysis and coding can help them with running those experiments and data analysis so even though coding might not be uh on the job description for astronauts um but however Cod coding is more than just knowing how to write lines of code coding is a way of

Thinking is a way of um tackling problems and finding Creative Solutions to tricky problems and guess what all of these are uh must have skills for astronauts Laya are you still there I sure am fantastic questions from our students and you can keep asking your questions in our flip group go to

Flip.com Minecraft event we would love to hear from you now it’s a special day with a very special guest and we want to invite all of you to gather in front of your screens because it’s selfie time teachers Guardians and caregivers and parents grab your cameras and get ready

Take some pictures with us to celebrate and remember all the learnings and the inspiration we’ll give you a few seconds to get set Up All right 3 2 1 emis All right I got my pck and I can’t wait to see everyone else’s so please share them with us at Microsoft flip at playcraft learn at Nasa stem and at com. thank you so much now Comack Before We Say Goodbye Is there anything special you’d like to tell everyone out there

Watching today thank you Lila Yes actually here at JPL we proudly embrace the slogan D Mighty things so I would like to encourage all of you out there to DARE Mighty things to dare let your imaginations fly and remember sky is not the limit it is only the beginning so

Dare to Envision a better world and let coding be your tool to shape that Vision into reality back to Ela a big Cosmic thank you to you comac and NASA thank you for joining us today for inspiring us all and for sharing your Insight with everyone watching that was amazing now

Future programmers and Space Explorers out there as comic shared coding is the future and a great way to start learning more about coding is the hour of code lessons in Minecraft education they are free and fun hour of code lessons help everyone understand some of the fundamental basics of programming such

As sequences and loops and this year’s lesson is all about artificial intelligence AI let’s get a sneak peek and learn how you can start coding go to aka.ms hourofcode and let’s watch a quick video And now the learning and inspiration is not over head to flip.com Minecraft event so your students can reflect on all they learned during today’s live event and although this was our last event for 2023 all our events are available to watch On Demand bookmark aka.ms flip events and enjoy some of our

Best shows anytime we’ll be back next year in 2024 with more Adventures so stay tuned now on behalf of flip the Minecraft Education team and NASA stem team and our very special guest Dr kabati thank you for Watching N