MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Jane Platt
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 30, 1998
EDUCATORS, COMMUNITY MEMBERS ONBOARD FOR JUPITER AND COMET MISSIONS
Educators and community members from across the country have been
selected from a field of hundreds of candidates to participate in educational
training and grassroots programs sponsored by NASA's Galileo project and
the Stardust comet sample return mission.
Both missions are managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), Pasadena, CA. These programs are part of ongoing JPL and NASA efforts to
enhance science and math teacher training in U.S. schools, and to bring the
excitement of space travel to the community level.
The Galileo project has named 55 new ambassadors and co-ambassadors to
educate the public in communities across America about the Galileo Europa
mission's current journey around Jupiter and its moons. The mission's main
focus is on the moon Europa, which may have a liquid water ocean beneath
its icy crust. The addition of the new graduates, who span the country from
northeast Maine to Hawaii, brings the total number of Galileo ambassadors
to 84. Each ambassador has proposed at least five community events, such
as planetarium shows, museum displays and programs for Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts. The ambassadors, primarily K-12 educators, join the recently
appointed Galileo Fellows, who instruct other teachers in spreading the
word about the Galileo mission. A state-by-state listing of ambassadors,
hometowns, contact information and a calendar of ambassador-hosted events
can be found on the Internet at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/ambassadors.
The Stardust project, which will launch a spacecraft to a comet next
February, has chosen the initial 10 educators from 10 states as Stardust
Fellowship winners. An additional 15 will be chosen in the fall. The
educators will receive intensive training on the mission and its science.
The training is designed to facilitate development of a nationwide teacher
training initiative with supporting educational materials. The effort is
targeted at grades 4-8 and focuses on teaching students about small solar
system bodies such as comets and asteroids. Stardust's Fellows Program is
part of an educational outreach partnership between the project, the
Virginia-based Challenger Center for Space Science Education and Lockheed
Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which is assembling the Stardust spacecraft.
Information on Stardust and its Educator Fellows can be found at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov.
