USA: Providing an Online Learning Platform for Children in Collaboration with the National Institute of Aerospace
LunaSustain Platform Interface URL: https://lunasustain.nianet.org/
The Panasonic Foundation in the United States, in partnership with the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), launched an online learning platform for middle school students called "LunaSustain " in October 2024.
Currently, LunaSustain is utilized in 27 U.S. states and has been adopted in eight other countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Turkey. To date, approximately 295,000 students have enjoyed learning how they can contribute to the world through this program.
What Is LunaSustain?
This learning platform was funded by the Panasonic Foundation and designed by NIA and bully! Entertainment (a company specializing in experiential content using AR and AI technologies), in collaboration with NASA. Through this platform, students become "solutionaries" and travel to five destinations (the Earth, the International Space Station, the Orion, the Gateway, and the Moon), engaging in sustainability-themed activities.
For example, at the second destination, the "International Space Station," students consider "water usage." While the average person on Earth uses 80-100 gallons (roughly 300-380 liters) of water per day, astronauts in space use only one gallon (approximately 4 liters). Through videos and worksheets, students are encouraged to think about how we on Earth can also reduce our use of water.
These activities foster STEM skills by encouraging students to use critical and creative thinking skills to look at sustainability in new ways.
Sample videos and worksheets provided by LunaSustain
LunaSustain in Diverse Educational Settings
LunaSustain has been widely shared with schools, after-school programs, museums, science centers, and professional educational societies. Since it is primarily used in group settings with an instructor, a teacher's guide outlining best practices was developed. Notably, LunaSustain has been at the core of NIA's pre-service teacher training programs, ensuring that the effort will be used for years to come.
A teacher in New York who uses LunaSustain in class shared the following: "I teach physical science to seventh-grade students and life science to eighth-grade students at a middle school. LunaSustain offers activities that relate to both sciences, showing the students how sciences are connected and how one affects the other. Through its activities, LunaSustain helps students recognize the relevance of science to the real world, and understand why science is important in addressing sustainability.
The Panasonic Foundation will continue to address educational disparities through equitable access to STEM education.
[Related Link]
Release on the Launch of LunaSustain
About Panasonic Foundation
40th Anniversary of the Panasonic Foundation
