By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL
Would you expect to find water in the asteroid belt? Dawn mission researchers hope the ion propelled spacecraft will help them answer that question.
Dawn Education Outreach Director Britney Schmidt from the University of Texas chatted with 34 Senior OLC members on Thursday, December 9th during our Live Chat. Ms. Schmidt, a planetary geologist, told INSPIRE about the important science that can be accomplished by studying these cast-offs from the creation of the Solar System.
The largest member of the asteroid belt, Ceres, is actually a dwarf planet that has differentiated itself into a spherical body with an iron core, and a great possibility of water beneath it's surface. To study these interesting artifacts in greater detail, NASA launched Dawn to rendezvous with asteroids Vesta and Ceres.
Seniors attending the chat asked many questions, all of which can be heard by viewing the archive of the evening, found in the Archives from the Live Chat link on the Connect page, or as a MP3 or Quicktime file (available on Monday) in the Home Page Archive.
Next week's Live Chat will feature the hosts from the NASA EDGE program. It will be open to all grade levels. Because we can only have 100 students in our Elluminate chat room, a sign-up thread will open on Monday, December 13 at 8:00pm CT. The first 100 names will be invited to the chat. Students who are not invited will have the archive available. See you then!
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