March 4, 2010 – Alexandria, VA – Challenger Center for Space Science Education hosts a live interactive webcast for teachers and students on Wednesday, March 10th at 1:00pm ET with Brian Day, NASA Education and Public Outreach manager. In this presentation, we will look at how our new generation of robotic probes has discovered water on the Moon and its importance to our exploration of the solar system. We will concentrate on the recent LCROSS lunar impactor mission which excavated one of the permanently-shadowed craters at the Moon’s South Pole. We will also take a brief look ahead to one of NASA’s next missions to the Moon, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer scheduled for launch in late 2012. The webcast is free and open to the public. Visit http://webcasts.challenger.org.
Forty years ago, the Apollo missions were helping us to develop an understanding of our nearest neighbor in space, the Moon. In recent years, a series of robotic lunar missions has provided us with new and exciting views of the Moon. The stories these recent missions are telling us reveal a Moon that is far different from what we thought we knew from the Apollo era.
Most excitingly, we now know that the Moon has water. Much of this is in the form of ice deposits in permanently-shadowed craters at the Moon’s poles. These mysterious dark regions are the coldest places yet measured anywhere in the solar system.
Brian Day works at NASA’s Ames Research Center leading development of education and public outreach (E/PO) programs for the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission to the Moon. From 2007-2010 he served as the E/PO Lead for NASA’s LCROSS lunar impactor mission which discovered deposits of water ice at the Moon’s South Pole. Brian has also participated in various NASA Mars Analog Field Studies in extreme environments here on Earth. In 2007, Brian flew on the Aurigid-MAC mission to record fragments of comet Kiess entering Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Brian is also an avid solar eclipse chaser, having traveled around the world to see eclipses from such exotic locations as the wilds of Africa, the heights of the Andes, the jungles of Central America, the Outback of Australia, the frozen wastes of Northern Mongolia, and the base of the Great Wall in China. Brian has a Masters Degree in Astronomy from the University of Western Sydney, a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from the University of California Los Angeles, and a Bachelors Degree in Information Systems Management from the University of San Francisco.
About Challenger Center
Using space exploration as a theme and simulations as a vehicle, Challenger Center and its international network of nearly 50 Challenger Learning Centers create positive educational experiences that raise students’ expectations of success, fosters a long-term interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and inspires students to pursue studies and careers in these areas. Challenger Center’s network of Challenger Learning Centers across the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea reach more than 400,000 students each year through simulated space missions and educational programs, and engage over 40,000 educators through missions, teacher workshops and other programs. To learn more about Challenger Center for Space Science Education, visit www.challenger.org.
Contact:
Rob Cork, Director of Communications
rcork@challenger.org
703-535-1361
Challenger Center for Space Science Education
300 N. Lee Street, Suite 301
Alexandria, VA 22314
