NASA uses Comics as Communication

Dr. Marc Hairston and Dr. Mary Urquhart at the Universtity of Texas wanted to explain to grade-school students a NASA mission to study the Earth's ionosphere. So how do you explain to kids what the ionosphere and why the study of it is important in a way that's going to interest them?

Dr. Hairston and Dr. Urquhart decided to enlist Erik Lervold, an arts student from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and together they produced a comic. The comic tells the story of CINDI, an android girl who chases down robot dogs in space. It soon becomes clear that the robot dogs are an analogy for the ionosphere, and that CINDI is the satellite that NASA is using to study these particles. What a great way to introduce a difficult concept.

The comic is available as a free download from the University of Texas web site.