Europlanet : Experience Exploration

by Doug Ellison in Potsdam

After the Q'n'A marathon that followed my presentation this morning - two people from JPL talked about their outreach projects - Alice Wessen and Kevin Hussey. Alice heads up outreach for Cassini at JPL and highlighted some of the key projects that the mission has embarked upon recently. Three key points really stood out for me. The first I can get out of the way REALLY quickly - the raw images getting put online within 8 hours of receipt. As you can probably tell, I think that's a rather good idea - and to this day it still has massive visitor numbers, the novelty of exploration a billion miles from home hasn't worn off, and I don't think it ever can.

Two other fascinating projects about which I knew very little involve schools. The