month |
 |
 |
September 2, 2003
Dear GAVRT Teachers,
As you begin another fruitful year of educating America’s future, I would invite you to take part in the progressive growth of the GAVRT Project. We have expanded our menu of Special Mission Projects to offer you more choices. There are also exciting activities to partake of with the Jupiter Quest Project this fall. One of our Special Mission projects, the Mars Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) Project was launched in August. Students from Iowa, Washington, Pennsylvania, and California participated in the radar imaging of the Gusev Crater landing site, which was selected for the MER Rover, “ Spirit”, to touch down in January of 2004. There will be other opportunities to participate in Mars radar measurements this month!
September is also an important month for Jupiter Quest! The Galileo spacecraft will be making its final descent into Jupiter’s atmosphere on September 21, 2003 (known as Jupiter Impact – see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/countdown/). Jupiter’s flux density measurements were increasing before it went “dark” behind the Sun’s interference on August 7. What will the measurements indicate when it remerges around September 8, 2003? What will the emissions from Jupiter’s radiation belts be like when Galileo encounters the magnetic field on its entry into the planet? Join us as we seek the answers to these and other questions!
Two other Special Mission opportunities will arrive this fall. One is the 2003 Uranus Campaign where GAVRT students and teachers will be taking measurements of Uranus and assisting in the development of atmospheric models of the planet. You can sign up for antenna times for Uranus Campaign from late September until the early part of December.
The other is the Quasar Variability Study (QVS), which will launch later this fall and continue through June of 2004. The QVS Mission offers students and teachers the chance to study some of the most distant objects, quasars, and discover the role interstellar scintillation plays in the measurements of these objects. If you want to discover what interstellar scintillation is, sign up for the special mission and the curriculum will explain it to you!
As the GAVRT Project continues to expand into new states and locations overseas with the DoDEA schools, it is creating more and more demand on operating the antenna increasing the number of hours. This fact, coupled with the greater variety of missions and opportunities, has necessitated a change in the normal six hour offering per teacher of antenna time. You may still receive your six hours under our new 3 + 3 format. Each teacher who completes the first three hours of their antenna time on the Jupiter Quest Project will be entitled to another three hours on the mission of their choosing. This will allow us to allocate and maintain adequate staffing to support your online instruction.
We have a new and improved method of connecting to our GAVRT Operations for your antenna sessions. It is via the Internet on your classroom computer; what could be easier? No longer will you need any software or special program to connect other than a computer connected to the Internet. It has proven to be a much easier method to avoid the ever-present and ever-changing firewall issues you contend with at schools. Please contact Kim Bunnell at (760) 946-5414 ext. 234 or kbunnell@lcer.org and she will send you the easy instructions prior to your connectivity test. (Please note all our email addresses changed!)
On a personal note, we bid a fond farewell to Jim Roller, one of the founders of the GAVRT Project, who retired in July. As we embark on a new era of GAVRT partnerships with an increasing number of possibilities, we are indebted to Jim and others who nurtured, inspired, and developed the GAVRT Project. We stand on the shoulders of their achievements as we venture out on new explorations in a quest for knowledge about the space that surrounds us. I invite you to join us as together we explore objects in the “backyard” of our Solar System and climb over the back fence to explore objects that lie in distant realms well beyond those confines! We wish you a year filled with fulfilling discoveries about the universe that surrounds us and discoveries and insights into your own abilities and knowledge!
Sincerely,
David MacLaren
Director, Educational Research and Development
Lewis Center for Educational Research
dmaclaren@lcer.org