This past July, I attended the MAVEN Educator Ambassador workshop at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder (also known as LASP for all of you who like to toss around the sciencey acronyms).
MAVEN stands for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. This spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 18, 2013 and it is the first mission devoted to understanding the upper atmosphere of Mars. The goal of the MAVEN mission is to determine what happened to the atmosphere and water on Mars. By taking measurements of the current atmosphere and the factors that affect it, scientists will be able to extrapolate back in time to get a picture of what Mars may have looked like in the past. As an Educator Ambassador, we spent a lot of time learning about the planetary magnetism of Mars as compared to Earth and how that may account for some of the loss of the Martian Atmosphere. In return, I am teaching my STEM-Exploratory at Western Center Academy on MAVEN. It has been an amazing opportunity not just for myself but for the students at WCA. |