Just watching the Mars landing - wow! The Marco satellites are amazing.
Our next mission will be with another class since we are in a semester system - it will be a group of grade 12 students. I will be waiting to see what goal they would like to set - since this launch will be at the end of the course I am able to let the students steer the mission a little more than I could this time.
MY goal is to get some kids working on the computer programming and electronics side of things. I have just moved over to this school in September and they do not have a computer science program at all. I am going to build a program but since students select courses almost a year in advance I have no actual comp sci courses running this year, and so building a systems team is what I plan to work on. Next week I am starting a group called Code Green Game Development with hopes of meeting more of my target audience, making some games, and getting at least a few of them interested in some pi, python and electronics for the next mission.
Another opportunity that arose from our mission is an invitation received by our school from the Canadian Space Agency (http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/balloons/base.asp) to attend their stratospheric balloon launch in September from their site in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. They have invited a team of 20 people from our school to go to the launch. I am truly excited to see something of this scale. High altitude ballooning really is a gift that keeps on giving our kids learning adventures.