A free, hands-on astrobotany program for K–12 classrooms and citizen scientists. Students grow microgreens, measure how roots respond to gravity, collect real data on their phones, and share it with a worldwide community studying how plants grow in space.
🌐 Live site: https://dr-richard-barker.github.io/AIRI/
This repository holds the source for the AIR documentation and curriculum, built with Material for MkDocs.
- Classroom Track (Stages I–IV) — data literacy, growing microgreens, and gravitropism experiments needing little more than seeds, water, and a smartphone.
- Extension & Research Track (Stages V–XI) — plant hormones, cloning, computational modelling, and mining real spaceflight RNA-seq data.
- For Teachers — NGSS-aligned guidance, materials lists, and safety notes.
# 1. Install pinned dependencies (Python 3.x)
pip install -r requirements.txt
# 2. Live-preview the site with hot reload
mkdocs serve
# open http://127.0.0.1:8000/
# 3. Build the static site into ./site
mkdocs buildThe site deploys automatically to GitHub Pages via the deploy.yml GitHub Actions workflow on every push to main.
⚙️ One-time setup: In the repository, go to Settings → Pages → Build and deployment and set Source = "GitHub Actions". (This replaces the older "deploy from a branch" method.)
Documentation lives in docs/ and the navigation is defined in docs/SUMMARY.md. The easiest way to suggest an edit is the pencil icon at the top of any page on the live site. For larger changes, open an issue or a pull request. Translations and new lesson ideas are especially welcome.
AIR follows FAIR principles — data and materials should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. All content is released to the public domain under CC0 1.0, so you may use, remix, and translate it freely. If you use AIR in teaching or research, a citation is appreciated — see CITATION.cff.
A program of the SKG Astrobotany Research and Education Program (Osaka, Japan) and the Gilroy Lab, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Authors: Gilbert Cauthorn, Sophia Griffith, Rachel Wang, and Dr. Richard Barker.