Party at Yuri's Night DC - April 12, 2008

Yuri's Night is almost here! Yuri's Night is an annual, worldwide event to celebrate manned spaceflight. On April 12, 1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space. Twenty years later, on April 12, 1981, the US launched the first space shuttle mission. Yuri's Night is celebrated all over the world - last year events were held in over 30 countries! If you live in the DC, MD, VA area you can celebrate Yuri's Night 2008 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, on April 12. According to the website, you'll be able to... "Groove to live music from the popular local band, the Cassettes or DJ Scientifics' hip hop infused beats. Jump in our Moon Bounce. Kick back with a NASA rocket scientist. Climb in a Mercury Capsule. Check out the ultimate disco ball, the Science on a Sphere Exhibit. Chill out in the glow of extrasolar planets." There will also be contests and give-aways! The party will run from 7pm-1am. Shuttle service will be available between Goddard and the Greenbelt Metro Station.

Check out the Yuri's Night 2008 website for more information on festivities, tickets, directions, etc. Hope to see you all there!

Back in MD after a successful and interesting LPSC

Last week Steph and I attended the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in TX. We had a great time, caught up with old friends, met new ones, and learned a lot. The two education workshops, one on the Moon and one on Mercury and Pluto, went well. Our poster presentation on Tuesday night was also a hit. We had tons of people stop by from various NASA centers and missions, universities, and even the European Space Agency (ESA). While most of the visitors to our poster had heard of Second Life before, not many of them had ever tried it out. All were surprised to learn about all of the space-and science-related activities already occurring there and were very intrigued by our suggestions for how it could be used for participatory exploration.

For a great account of the week's events and some of the major scientific presentations from LPSC, visit this Nature reporter's blog.

39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Geosteph and I are leaving this weekend to travel to TX for the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. It's a week-long conference for international planetary scientists and educators to present their current research and mission results. The conference consists of both talks and poster presentations on a variety of subjects. View the enitre program, which includes links to the abstracts.

On Sunday, Geosteph will help lead a workshop called Reaching the Moon for planetary scientists and educators. Then on Wednesday we'll both lead a workshop for educators called Fire and Ice about the MESSENGER mission to Mercury and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. There may still be slots available for these workshops. Click here to learn more.

On Tuesday, we will be presenting a poster on Tuesday night in the Education and Public Outreach Programs session to accompany our abstract, which is about how NASA might use Second Life for informal space science education and participatory exploration.

If we're lucky, Geosteph might tweet from the meeting so stay tuned!

How much ice might be on Mercury? Use math to find out!

The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft performed its first flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008. In addition to mapping the entire surface of the planet, one of its goals is to shed new light on the existence of ice in the polar regions of this hot planet. Ice on Mercury? It's not as strange as it seems! Click here to learn more and to access a pdf that provides a series of space math questions (and an answer key) related to this topic. For more classroom activities related to ice in on Mercury and elsewhere in our solar system click here. For more space math problems visit http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov. A new space math problem is added every week!