NASA INVITES STUDENTS TO NAME NEW MARS ROVER

Entries Due: Jan. 25, 2009

NASA, in cooperation with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures' movie WALL-E from Pixar Animation Studios, will conduct a naming contest for its car-sized Mars Science Laboratory rover that is scheduled for launch in 2009. The contest is open to students 5 to 18 years old who attend a U.S. school and are enrolled in the current academic year. To enter the contest, students will submit essays explaining why their suggested name for the rover should be chosen. In March 2009, the public will have an opportunity to rank nine finalist names via the Internet as additional input for judges to consider during the selection process. NASA will announce the winning rover name in April 2009.

http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov

Help Scientists Find the Mars Polar Lander

In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) failed to send a signal to Earth after it was supposed to have landed on Mars, leading scientists and engineers to believe it most likely crashed. However, scientists still don't know exactly what happened to MPL, nor where exactly it crashed on the surface of Mars. In the wake of MPL's failure, the University of Arizona proposed the Phoenix Mars Lander. On May 25th, Phoenix will be landing in the high northern latitudes of Mars in an attempt to accomplish many of the same science goals as the doomed MPL.

Recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), released 18 images of the supposed MPL landing/crash site. They are asking for the public's help in locating the doomed MPL lander. Each image is HUGE, approximately 1.6 billion pixels. "If your computer screen is 1000 by 1000, that means you need 1600 screen shots to view one image," says Alfred McEwen, who leads the HiRISE team. If you'd like to learn more and participate, check out these sites: New Scientist and HiRISE blog.

To learn more about the Phoenix Mars Lander and the events surrounding its may 25th landing, click here.

"Follow the Carbon." Follow the What??

Recently I had the pleasure of writing an article about the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) for the February 2008 issue of ChemMatters, which is a publication of the American Chemical Society for high school classrooms. Below is an excerpt from the article. To download and read the entire article (including a Spanish translation) and issue, as well as to access the accompanying teacher's guide, click here.

“Follow the yellow brick road”. “Follow the leader”. You’re probably familiar with both of these phrases. But who would want to “follow the carbon” and what does that even mean? To NASA, “follow the carbon” means to identify carbon-bearing compounds, their sources, and the processes that transform them in order to evaluate the habitability of Mars. And that is exactly what the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) intends to do. MSL is scheduled to launch in late 2009 and will land on the surface of Mars in mid 2010, where it will spend at least one Mars year (687 Earth days) roving around the surface and collecting data. MSL will be the biggest rover yet to visit Mars. It will also carry the biggest suite of instruments ever sent to the martian surface, including a camera, neutron detector, laser, microscope, and an analytical laboratory. SAM is one component of this laboratory. SAM plans to “find the carbon” on Mars by collecting samples of the soil and atmosphere and analyzing them with three scientific instruments. Using the results obtained by the SAM instruments, scientists back on Earth will seek to investigate the habitability of Mars by answering the question, “What do the presence or absence and characteristics of key compounds at Mars tell us about the ability of Mars to support past or present life?”

'Tis the Season for Candy and Mars Exploration

Now that the candy and sweets season is in full swing, why not put some of that sugary goodness to good use to learn about Mars exploration?

"Areology - The Study of Mars"
Using candy bars, plastic straws, and a few other simple items, students will accomplish these objectives:
· Examine a simulated Martian surface core sample.
· Learn how an unknown core sample can be identified by matching it with a known sample.
· Discover how surface core samples can tell us about the history and make-up of Mars.
· Consume the core sample at the end of the exercise!

View the complete activity, other Mars activities, and an associated teacher guide in the Mars Acitivities book at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/classroom/pdfs/MSIP-MarsActivities.pdf.

Twittering from the NASA IPY Meeting

I am currently sitting in the NASA International Polar Year education and public outreach meeting. During the meeting I am twittering the meeting highlights....here are my tweets from the from the first session.

in the IPY meeting! Jim Garvin is talking about polar regions on the Moon and Mars http://tinyurl.com/2eqhz9


Wow! Jim has the new LRO spacecraft visualization! Really cool (in a geeky sort of way) http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

now Jim is talking about Mars polar regions here's Jim http://tinyurl.com/28orru

I want Jim Garvin's Moon and Mars visualizations! We are meeting in GSFC's Science Visualization Studio http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Geeking out at high res images from MRO http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ of the north polar region of Mars

now Jim is talking about Phoenix mission. It launched 2 weeks ago. Check out the video http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/videos.php


Check out the NASA and IPY Video
http://ipy.nasa.gov/multimedia/m000000/m000000/m000015/index.html

NASA Antarctic researcher Bob Bindschadler is talking about LIMA ..Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica http://lima.usgs.gov/

LIMA: Faces of Antarctica is the education project that will introduce people to Antarctica. Website launches 10/07 http://lima.nasa.gov/

Now the guy from Earth & Sky, Ryan Britton http://www.earthsky.org/

Earth & Sky do radio shows on NASA polar science in english and spanish and podcasts over the next two years. Also social networks: MySpace

Lots of good discussions at lunch ... Now back to Twitter!

Now the GLOBE presentation http://www.globe.gov with a focus on the earth systems science projects

GLOBE Seasons and Biomes http://tinyurl.com/yr7zan

Bob Myers is talking about ESSEA http://essea.strategies.org/ Earth Systems Science Education Alliance online courses for science teachers

The ESSEA courses evolved from just online to combination of online and face-to-face. 3 courses K-4, 5-8, 9-12

Over 1700 preservice and inservice teachers were trained between 2002 and 2005 through ESSEA semester long courses

NASA IPY ESSEA project is to update K-4 course with polar themes and add some polar content to middle and high school courses

Teachers interested in taking an ESSEA course check out current course offerings http://essea.strategies.org/participants/offerings.aspx

DEW Digital Earth Watch...lead by museum of science in Boston with 6 partners uses plant health to monitor the environment

Now one of our projects Sharing IPY to Librarians and Afters School programs

This IPY project builds on "Explore fun with Science" http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/explore/