On Monday at 10 a.m. EST, NASA will host the third in a
series of six educational webcasts with the NASA Earth Crew.
The Earth Crew consists of more than 86,000 students and
families who joined through online registration since January
2003. The event is hosted by 14-year-old student Bianca Baker.
Baker is an Earth Crew member and a Tree House detective on
NASA SciFiles, an instructional TV series for elementary school
students.
The program is about food and nutrition for space explorers.
Guests include Mary Kicza, NASA’s Associate Administrator for
Biological and Physical Science; Dr. Scott Smith, a
nutritionist and manager for Nutritional Biochemistry at NASA’s
Johnson Space Center (JSC); and Vickie Kloeris, a Space Shuttle
and International Space Station Food Systems scientist at JSC.
Kicza and Smith will answer questions submitted in advance by
Earth Crew teams through NASA’s EdSpace Web site.
The theme of this year’s webcast series is “Explorers and
Exploration.” Each installment focuses on one of NASA’s
Enterprises: Aeronautics, Biological and Physical Research,
Earth Science, Education, Exploration Systems, Space Flight,
and Space Science.
“It is exciting for us to give students and their families the
opportunity to learn about what we do in each Enterprise,” said
Dr. Adena Williams Loston, NASA’s Associate Administrator for
Education. “By focusing on space food, long a topic of interest
among young people, we hope to both educate them about
nutrition in space and, hopefully, inspire them to want to
learn even more through the study of biological or physical
sciences,” she added.
The Earth Crew is an initiative of NASA’s Educator Astronaut
Program. Crewmembers receive updates about new projects;
participate in exploration-related activities and webcasts,
which occur approximately every two months. They also have the
opportunity to provide suggestions to NASA that may help in
planning future missions.
The program is available on the Internet and on NASA TV at AMC-
9, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees west
longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is
vertical and audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz. For NASA TV
information on the Internet, visit:
To view the webcast on the Internet, more information about the
Educator Astronaut Program and the Earth Crew, visit:
For information about NASA’s Education programs on the
Internet, visit:
For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet,
visit:
