It's been another busy semester for LPL'ers who reach out to share their work at local schools and community events, big and small. The spring outreach season opened in January with the extremely popular Connect2Stem event in Phoenix, on January 28. The month of March began with LPL students and staff talking with approximately 650 visitors to Science City at the Tucson Festival of Books and wrapped up with presentations about impact cratering and the scale of solar system objects at the Southern Arizona Research Science and Engineering Foundation (SARSEF) Future Innovators Night, held during their roughly week-long science fair for K-12 students. LPL hosted its annual visit from a group of Norwegian high school students and counselors. Students from Tucson's La Cima Middle School spent a "career shadow" day at LPL that featured a lecture about meteorites from Postdoctoral Research Associate Prajkta Mane, a tour of the new Transmission Electron Microscope, and the opportunity to talk with three PTYS graduate students to learn about graduate school and life as a graduate student. Other opportunites for outreach included talks and demonstrations at local schools. Space Drafts, Tucson's flavor of Astronomy on Tap, featured four LPL speakers for the 2016/2017 season (Bapst, Keane, Sutton, and Volk). Graduate student outreach coordinators Sarah Morrison and Shane Stone estimate that LPL staff and students met approximately 3,151 people during spring 2017 events.

The LPL table at Connect2Stem featured globes of Earth, the moon, Venus, Mars, Europa, and Pluto. Outreach volunteers discussed the different scales of these planetary bodies and Senior Research Specialist Dolores Hill conducted demonstrations of the OSIRIS-REx TAGSAM.

At Connect2Stem, LPL graduate student Sarah Morrison was interviewed by a meteorologist from a Phoenix news channel.

Norwegian high school students spent the day with LPL research groups.