A prestigious panel of scientists, astronauts and educators, including renowned professor Stephen Hawking, will judge the entries with input from the YouTube community. Students in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17–18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a two-minute YouTube video describing their experiment now through December 7, 2011 to YouTube.com/SpaceLab. Entrants may submit up to three experiments in one of two scientific disciplines – either biological or physical sciences. The video can be as simple as an explanation on a blackboard or the demonstration of a mock-up in the classroom. Every video must, however, explain the following:

Experiment Question: The scientific question the entrant wants to test.

Hypothesis: An educated guess at answering the experiment question.

Method: A simple explanation of the methods used to conduct the experiment testing the hypothesis in microgravity.

Results: The expected results of the experiment.

The top 60 finalists will be announced on January 3, 2012, at which time judging and public voting will begin. Please, carefully read all the entry and experiment requirements at YouTube.com/SpaceLab.

Global winners, two individuals/teams chosen from the regional winners, one in each age category, will be announced in the USA in March 2012. There are three regions – Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the Americas and Asia/Pacific. Regional assignment is determined by the region of the network where you log in to YouTube.com. This means that students, even of different nationalities, accessing the Internet from Saudi Arabia will all be representing the Kingdom and assigned to the EMEA region. Entries must be created in one of 13 languages. English and French are two of the available entry languages, Arabic isn't.   

Six regional finalists will gather in Washington, D.C., in March 2012 to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop. From them, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth at the ISS. Additionally, the global winners will get to choose a unique space experience as a prize: either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they are 18 years old, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts.

In a press conference discussing the contest, Dr. Regina Blue, manager, ISS National Laboratory Education Projects for NASA, stated that the crew of the International Space Station has always welcomed the opportunity to conduct educational activities onboard the ISS. She advised that they are very excited about getting a chance to incentivize the students and to help expand the students'  knowledge about space   

"As part of the overall ISS education effort, we are constantly seeking innovative ways to use this engineering marvel (the ISS) that provides a unique microgravity environment and the sheer excitement of space to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics or STEM careers," said Blue. "The ability for students to develop and experiment from the theoretical to the practical experience we believe will develop the key creative and analytical abilities they will need as a future member of the STEM workforce. What better place to run a global competition than on the ISS, which in fact was built and operates as a true global partnership."

Michael Schmedlen, director, Worldwide Education, Lenovo added that when  students decide to go into STEM careers, they tend to decide early, in middle school and high school. "Research has shown that the more students feel engaged in learning with real life applications the more they're interested in STEM," said Schmedlen. 

Lenovo has long been a contributor to space exploration. Currently there are about 64 laptops onboard the ISS with approximately 62 of those being IBM/Lenovo computers. To commemorate Lenovo technology’s role in space exploration and Space Lab, Lenovo is introducing a Space Lab Special Edition ThinkPad Tablet for space enthusiasts. The astronaut-inspired package includes a 32 GB ThinkPad Tablet pre-loaded with space and education-related apps, an International Space Station mission badge, Space Lab sticker, sling bag and noise-canceling headphones sold via www.lenovo.com/spacelab.

The idea for Space Lab came from Zahaan Bharmal, Google’s Head of Marketing Operations, EMEA, who proposed the idea in a marketing brainstorming session at Google three years ago. Bharmal encourages teachers to go to www.youtube.com/spacelab where resources directed to educators would help teachers bring Space lab into their classrooms.   

“As a company committed to the next generation of scientists, YouTube launched Space Lab to allow ordinary students the extraordinary opportunity of having their experiment carried out in space,” said Bharmal. “The Space Lab channel will serve as a home base on YouTube for creating, sharing, and discovering the best space and science-related videos in the world."

— MYBI