LPL Outreach Update

by Dolores Hill, Sarah Morrison, and Maria Schuchardt

LPL’s outreach efforts continue to flourish. In the past year, we have interacted with over 6,000 people at various events. The monthly Space Drafts lecture series at Borderlands Brewing continues to be very popular, with an attendance of about 100 people at each event. Space Drafts is a public talk series organized by LPL graduate student Sarah Morrison, Steward Observatory, and NOAO.

Graduate student Margaret Landis discusses the climate history of Mars at Space Drafts.

OSIRIS-REx outreach has been extremely busy also. One of the big events this season was the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., hosted by spacecraft partner Lockheed Martin. Over several days, more than 350,000 enthusiastic visitors and VIPs learned about the OSIRIS-REx mission at the large NASA and Lockheed Martin pavilions. Erin Morton, Christine Hoekenga, Heather Roper, and Dolores Hill comprised two LPL teams that displayed OCAMS hardware, TAGSAM simulators and meteorites alongside the original TAGSAM and Sample Return Capsule prototypes.

Countdown to Lift-off, the annual LPL Summer Science Saturday open house held on August 27, highlighted the OSIRIS-REx mission. There was a panel discussion with OSIRIS-REx scientists Bashar Rizk, Carl Hergenrother, and Mike Nolan. Ed Beshore presented a lecture titled, Bennu Here We Come. The event also included an arts component. Assistant Professor of English Scott Selisker presented a lecture on Imagining Asteroids in Science Fiction and the History of Astronomy and Christopher Cokinos (Associate Professor of English) gave a reading from his book, The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars. The event also featured a performance by UA Theatre Students, Summer Solon, Socorro Cordova, and Brandon Joule titled Journey Through History. The event included exhibits about OSIRIS-REx and many interactive children’s activities. It was a very full and successful day of outreach to 700 visitors.

We have participated in many community STEM activities and in presentations to classrooms of students. Many children who attended University of Arizona summer camps stopped by LPL for tours and talks on Mars and the HiRISE mission. The beautiful globes of the terrestrial planets, moons, and even Pluto have been a great way to attract people for discussion of the research that we do at LPL. We talk to children, and also many adults, answering the questions they have about space: “Science, it’s not just for kids.”