The young scientists told the Cassini cameras where to point between 7.03 and 7.49 UTC on April 13 2007. Relative to Saturn, the spacecraft was travelling at 7,494 miles per hour and was 1.08 million miles from Saturn. Students had to convince scientists which images the spacecraft should take and why.
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Cassini image of saturn
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The winner of the essay competition was fifteen year old Sarah Avery from Morpeth School. Experts from NASA and Queen Mary, University of London (link opens in a new window)| (QMUL) were dazzled by Sarah's exquisite rhetoric and the case that she made for an image which she argued shows the sheer breathtaking beauty of science." Sarah says, "The Cassini image will show Saturn as natural, untainted and untouched. It would be lovely to think that we would not exploit any resources that are discovered but just to gaze in awe and wonder at the beauty of science and discovery."
Professor Carl Murray, a UK member of the Cassini imaging team was impressed by the quality of the entries. Professor Murray said, "I think that Sarah Avery's case was an excellent piece of writing. Image 1 would not have been my own personal choice on the basis of scientific return, but her arguments and her case are very persuasive."
Professor Murray also singled out for praise Mahmoda Coli Yasmin, also from Morpeth School, and Danielle Walker from Dartford Grammar School. James Follows aged 6 from St. Michaels CE Primary School received an honourable mention as the youngest entrant. Professor Murray said "I am amazed by the quality and diversity of the arguments that have been made in support of each image. Clearly each participant has thought carefully about the scientific issues before making their case. This is exactly the same process that Cassini scientists have to go through."
Winning students were able to view the images they selected on a giant computer screen at Queen Mary, University of London recently. They also took part in a video conference where they were able to quiz NASA and QMUL experts about the images and what they might reveal. Sarah and the runners up will have a priceless record of their work - a limited edition print of the image signed by Professor Murray.
NASA is delighted with the competition and with the support they have received from Queen Mary, University of London and the Ideas Foundation in setting the challenge to UK Students. New curriculum materials based on the project and the winning essays will soon be available on the NASA websites. And more students will soon have another opportunity to make space exploration history as NASA gives more students a chance to tell the Cassini cameras where to point in November 2007.
Morpeth is taking part in the Ideas Foundation (link opens in a new window)| Creative Space programme being supported by the Sir John Cass Foundation, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and the Royal Aeronautical Society. Students will soon be visiting the House of Commons to create their 'case for space' and will then be embarking on two further space missions – a Red Dragons day where they pitch for a mission to Mars at the National Maritime Museum and a summer school hosted by Queen Mary, University of London where students will work with leading scientists and engineers to plan a mission to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Students who excel during the competition will have an opportunity to visit NASA centres in Houston and Florida and present their ideas to NASA staff in a visit arranged by the International Space School Education Trust.
Robin Wight, Chairman of WCRS Advertising and founder of the Ideas Foundation says "This programme has provided an out of this world experience for young people and really helped them to see the beauty and creativity within the world of science."
Contacts
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Gill Ormrod
Science and Technology Facilities Council Press Office
Tel: 01793 442012
Mobile: 0781 8013 509
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Heather Macrae
Ideas Foundation
Tel: 01279 833004
Mobile 0781 576 8699
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Sian Halkyard
Queen Mary, University of London Press Office
Tel: 0207 882 7454
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Professor Carl Murray
Queen Mary, University of London
Tel: 0207 882 5456
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Preston Dyches
Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations
Tel: 011 44 303 720 974 5859
Editor's Notes
Full list of winners
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Image 1:
Winner: Sarah Avery (Morpeth)
Runner-up: Mahmoda Coli Yasmin (Morpeth)
Honourable mention: James Follows
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Image 2:
Winner: Danielle Walker (Dartford)
Runner-up: Farjana Aktar (Morpeth)
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Image 3:
Winner: Charlotte Fountaine (Morpeth)
Runner-up: Lincoln Benjamin (Morpeth)
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Overall Winner: Sarah Avery (Morpeth)
The competition is one of a series of challenges being offered by the Ideas Foundation in its creative space programme which seeks to inspire the next generation of scientists.
Images
The winning images will be processed at the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS, or CICLOPS, and released to the public on the CICLOPS website (link opens in a new window)|.
Images of the winning students and the NASA/QMUL video conference are available from Heather Macrae or Gill Ormrod – contact details above.
About Professor Carl Murray
Professor Carl Murray, a UK member of the Cassini imaging Team (led by Dr. Carolyn Porco, director of CICLOPS at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado) set the challenge to the young students at a masterclass hosted by Queen Mary, University of London. Professor Murray works closely with his fellow imaging team members and Dr. Jeff Cuzzi, the Chair of the Cassini Project's Rings Working Group and has been instrumental in giving UK students a chance to get involved in this competition. Professor Murray invited schools/colleges from across the UK to send him a 500 word essay explaining which image of Saturn and its rings the imaging instrumentation should focus on. The opportunity coincided with the National Science and Engineering Week.
What is Cassini-Huygens?
Cassini-Huygens is a joint mission with NASA, ESA, and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. It was launched in 1997 to study Saturn and its rings and moons. ESA has contributed the Huygens probe, which was released by the Cassini mothership in 2004. UK scientists have taken part in the development of eight of the eighteen instruments on Cassini and Huygens.
About the Image Transfer from the Spacecraft
The typical light-travel time from Saturn is about 80 minutes. In practice what happens is that all our images, plus all the other scientific data, is stored in RAM on the spacecraft and then there is a daily download lasting several hours to NASA's Deep Space Network (radio telescopes in California, Spain and Australia) when the data is transmitted to Earth.
Queen Mary is one of the leading colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2,600. Queen Mary is a research focused higher education institution, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.
The Ideas Foundation was founded by genius adman Robin Wight (think Orange, BMW, 118118 campaigns) to encourage creativity amongst young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Ideas Foundation is a Registered Charity (No 1090451) and is a company Limited by Guarantee (Registered in England 04270652).
The Ideas Foundation has been running successful programmes to foster creativity in the East End and this year is branching out to foster creativity in science in a pilot programme with Morpeth School. It shares the vision of the BIS to turn imagination into reality. The programme is industry led and seeks to give young people unrivalled access to 'real experts' in their fields. We are delighted to work with the British Interplanetary Society and hope that we encourage a new 'space generation' interested in science and technology.
