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/Mary Beth Murrill
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.
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