First Educator Astronaut
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August 15, 2007 - As the first Educator Astronaut, mission specialist Barbara Morgan, launches into orbit, NASA's mission for education aims to inspire, engage and educate the nation's future workforce.
Image Credit: NASA |
An Educator Astronaut is a fully qualified astronaut who brings expertise in K-12 education. With their education background, Educator Astronauts will help lead NASA in the development of new ways to connect space exploration with the classroom, and to inspire the next generation of explorers, while ensuring a successful mission.
Morgan began her teaching career in 1974 on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary School in Arlee, Montana, where she taught remedial reading and math. From 1975-1978, she taught remedial reading/math and second grade at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, Idaho. From 1978-1979, Morgan taught English and science to third graders at Colegio Americano de Quito in Quito, Ecuador. From l979-l998, she taught second, third, and fourth grades at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School.
Morgan was selected as the backup candidate for the NASA Teacher in Space Program on July 19, 1985. From September 1985 to January 1986, Morgan trained with Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger crew at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. Following the Challenger accident, Morgan assumed the duties of Teacher in Space Designee. From March 1986 to July 1986, she worked with NASA, speaking to educational organizations throughout the country. In the fall of 1986,
Morgan returned to Idaho to resume her teaching career. She taught second and third grades at McCall-Donnelly Elementary and continued to work with NASA's Education Division, Office of Human Resources and
Education. Her duties as Teacher in Space Designee included public speaking, educational consulting, curriculum design, and serving on the National Science Foundation's Federal Task Force for Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering.
Selected by NASA as a mission specialist in January 1998, Morgan reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1998. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. She then served in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as prime communicator with on-orbit crews. More recently, she served in the Robotics Branch of the Astronaut Office.
A series of space-to-ground conversations between the members of the STS-118 crew and audiences at three different locations has been announced. The conversations will be broadcast on NASA TV
and webcast online:
Aug. 14, 2007, at 3:09 p.m. Mountain time -- Discovery Center of Idaho
Aug. 16, 2007, at 8:51 a.m. EDT -- Challenger Center for Space Science Education
Aug. 19, 2007, at 7:56 a.m. EDT -- Robert L. Ford School
For more information about NASA Education
Teacher Opportunity: InteractiveTraining-STS-118 Curricular Modules
Learn how to engage your students and teach science in the context of the STS-118 shuttle mission with the first Educator Astronaut spaceflight. Using the Internet and a telephone, immerse yourself
in two new NASA classroom activities: the Fit Explorer and the Engineering Design Challenge. These and other activities blend rich themes of energy, microgravity and colonization. One-hour sessions are
available July 23-Oct. 15, 2007.
For more information |
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SATURN: A Look From Above
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March 1, 2007 - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured never-before-seen views of Saturn from perspectives high above and below the planet's rings.
Over the last several months, the spacecraft has climbed to higher and higher inclinations, providing its cameras with glimpses of the planet and rings that have scientists gushing.
"Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Sailing high above Saturn and
seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before. It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo."
Surely one of the most gorgeous sights the solar system has to offer, Saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings.
Taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. Therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark-side of its rings, but longer than
that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit Saturn. Consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.
Between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen.
Bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. In the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face.
Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in contrast to what Cassini saw when it arrived in 2004.
The view is a mosaic of 36 images -- that is, 12 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees above the ring plane.
The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.23 million kilometers (764,000 miles) from Saturn.
Image scale is 70 kilometers (44 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations
center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission |
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