by Dolores Hill

This fall, LPL staff and students were busy reaching out not only to the local community but all of Arizona as well. Several events centered around moonfest, the University of Arizona’s extended celebration of the Apollo moon landings and future lunar exploration. We were able to “multiply our impact” at many public events with engagement by the Space Imagery Center, LPL Graduate Student Outreach, and OSIRIS-REx, thereby allowing us to reach more than 7000 people.

Spacefest brought together astronauts, artists, and space aficionados from all over the world including quite a few LPL alumni and longtime “friends of LPL” who stopped by the STEAM tables to say hello! We provided educational activities and exhibits for a range of ages and backgrounds from the STEM Showcase at Ocotillo Ridge Elementary School to Southern Arizona Technology Council industry leaders at the Tucson Convention Center. We presented the OSIRIS-REx mission’s “Final Four” Candidate sites in UArizona’s Research Innovation and Impact (RII) tent during UArizona homecoming and the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter Office and Science Shop open house that coincided with the transit of Mercury.

LPL and baseball? Sure! On July 20, LPL joined Raytheon for Space Day at the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in Phoenix and also provided an assortment of OSIRIS-REx hands-on activities and demonstrations for Goddard Space Flight Center’s STEM Education Day at Fenway Park in Boston. LPL Director Tim Swindle kindly volunteered to staff the Diamondbacks outreach event—double duty on July 20 after hosting LPL’s Summer Science Saturday Apollo anniversary celebration in Tucson. In addition to external community events, we conducted OSIRIS-REx and meteorite tours for Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory volunteers and presentations for Kitt Peak docents, IEEE Tucson and Sierra Vista, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Prescott Astronomy Club, and the Huachuca Astronomy Club. Summer and fall were jam-packed with wonderful opportunities to showcase LPL and our contributions to planetary science, past, present, and future.

OSIRIS-REx engineer Josh Nelson answers questions from Space Shuttle astronaut Linda Godwin in the Spacefest STEAM area. (Godwin was a crewmate of LPL  alumnus astronaut Tom Jones on STS-59).

Graduate student Indujaa Ganesh, ready to share many worlds at Spacefest 2019.