Cassini Team Recruits Next Generation of Scientists
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 09:28:37 -0800 (PST)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-140
Cassini Team Recruits Next Generation of Scientists
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
December 05, 2007
NASA's Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn has some young new
participants. A 10th-grade student in Delaware, a high school senior
in
California, and an 8th-grade American student in France are the
winners
of this year's Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest. Their essays,
selected from nearly 200 entries, earned them a spot in a
teleconference
held this week with members of the Cassini science team.
To participate, students had to select one of four images that
Cassini's
camera could capture on Nov. 30, 2007, and explain why they believe
their chosen target would provide the best scientific results. "This
is
just the sort of thinking that we have to do on a mission," said JPL's
Linda Spilker, Cassini deputy project scientist and one of the contest
judges. "We were really impressed by the entries. The proposals were
very well researched and well written. I think the future of planetary
science is in good hands."
Winners were chosen in two categories. Alexander Sharpe, who is
currently living in La Bruguiere, France, captured first prize in the
grade five to eight category. "The most fascinating thing about Saturn
is its rings," he wrote in his essay on the importance of getting an
image of Saturn's tiny moon Prometheus and the F ring.
There was a tie for first place in the grade nine to twelve category
with top honors going to Joshua Leviton, a 10th grader at the
Wilmington
Friends School in Wilmington, Del., and 12th grader Alistair McGregor
from Henry Gunn Senior High School in Palo Alto, Calif. Leviton
selected
Saturn's moon Tethys with its huge impact crater as his target of
choice. McGregor also argued for Prometheus and the F ring, writing
that
"we could gain a wealth of information concerning the interactions
between ring particles and larger objects in the Saturnian system."
The Cassini spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn three-and-a-half
years ago and has provided a wealth of new information about the
ringed
planet and its many mysterious moons.
Entries in the Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest came from 24
states.
Approximately 400 students participated in the contest either as
individuals or in groups of up to four. Separate contests were also
held
in the United Kingdom and India. The U.S. contest winners, along with
the semi-finalists joined in a teleconference with Cassini scientists
on
Tuesday, Dec. 4, and Wednesday, Dec. 5, where they had the opportunity
to have their questions answered and contribute to this groundbreaking
mission.
The next opportunity for students to participate in the Cassini
Scientist-for-a-Day contest will be in May of 2008.
More information on the Cassini-Huygens mission can be found at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
Cassini
mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media Contact: Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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