EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH
Sandy Dueck, Lead Co-Investigator
EVERGREEN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS PRESENT CAVE AND LAVA TUBE DISCOVERIES DURING VISIT TO AMES
For the third year in a row, students from Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, CA, visited the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) Ames team at NASA Ames Research Center to learn about astrobiology and to share the results of their THEMIS and HiRISE image analysis projects. This visit was an opportunity for the students to see firsthand the NASA mission connection to their project, and to expand their knowledge of job opportunities in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.
In the course of the students' day-long tour of Ames on May 30, 2010, they visited two of the NAI Ames team labs. Team member Linda Jahnke took the students to the rooftop greenhouse laboratory where they poked at microbial mats growing in saltwater baths. Jahnke explained that microbial mats are Earth's oldest biological communities and that by studying them, they could help us find life on other planets.
During their visit to the Exobiology Laboratory, NAI team member Dawn Cardace helped the students operate the TERRA x-ray diffraction mineral analyzer, which is closely related to the Chemin instrument to be launched in 2011 aboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover.
The students also met with Virginia Gulick, a science co-investigator on HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), and reviewed images of the cave and lava tube they discovered on Mars. The students and their teacher Dennis Mitchell have participated in several HiRISE Image Suggestion Challenge opportunities over the past few years. All of the Mars images that they had requested were acquired. Their newest image shows the Pavonis Mons pit where they discovered the cave.
The culmination of the students' fieldtrip to Ames was the presentation of the 7th and 8th grade research projects to the Ames NAI Team. The 7th grade team used the THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) camera to study lava tubes on Mars. While analyzing the tubes, they discovered a "skylight" cave on Pavonis Mons. There had only been seven caves discovered prior to this and they were all found on Arsia Mons.
The 8th grade team acquired two HiRISE images over two years that clearly showed cinder cone volcanoes with lava flows. Their research supports a team of French scientists that has a theory that these cinder cone volcanoes were responsible for the release of water in the Hydraotes Region northeast of Valles Marineris.
"Coming to Ames Research Center and presenting is, in my humble opinion, the most important aspect of my students and their research," said the students' teacher Dennis Mitchell. "It helps them see the value of their work and the contribution(s) they make to science. It also helps these very rural kids see the different job opportunities available to them."
AMES TEAM EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH
---Sandy Dueck, Lead Co-Investigator
Educational Resources
National Park Service: Lassen Volcanic National Park and Yellowstone National Park
California Academy of Sciences
Choctaw Nation's Jones Academy
NASA Digital Learning Network
University of California, Santa Cruz, Astrobiology Course
and Accessibility Certification