Cassini Team Recruits Next Generation of Scientists

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Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2007-140 Dec 5, 2007

Cassini Team Recruits Next Generation of Scientists

NASA's Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn has some young new participants. A 10th-grade
student in Delaware, a high school senior in California, and an 8th-grade American student in
France are the winners of this year's Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest. Their essays, selected
from nearly 200 entries, earned them a spot in a teleconference held this week with members of
the Cassini science team.

To participate, students had to select one of four images that Cassini's camera could capture on
Nov. 30, 2007, and explain why they believe their chosen target would provide the best scientific
results. "This is just the sort of thinking that we have to do on a mission," said JPL's Linda
Spilker, Cassini deputy project scientist and one of the contest judges. "We were really
impressed by the entries. The proposals were very well researched and well written. I think the
future of planetary science is in good hands."

Winners were chosen in two categories. Alexander Sharpe, who is currently living in La
Bruguiere, France, captured first prize in the grade five to eight category. "The most fascinating
thing about Saturn is its rings," he wrote in his essay on the importance of getting an image of
Saturn's tiny moon Prometheus and the F ring.

There was a tie for first place in the grade nine to twelve category with top honors going to
Joshua Leviton, a 10th grader at the Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, Del., and 12th
grader Alistair McGregor from Henry Gunn Senior High School in Palo Alto, Calif. Leviton
selected Saturn's moon Tethys with its huge impact crater as his target of choice. McGregor also
argued for Prometheus and the F ring, writing that "we could gain a wealth of information
concerning the interactions between ring particles and larger objects in the Saturnian system."

The Cassini spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn three-and-a-half years ago and has provided a
wealth of new information about the ringed planet and its many mysterious moons.

Entries in the Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest came from 24 states. Approximately 400
students participated in the contest either as individuals or in groups of up to four. Separate
contests were also held in the United Kingdom and India.
The U.S. contest winners, along with the semi-finalists joined in a teleconference with Cassini
scientists on Tuesday, Dec. 4, and Wednesday, Dec. 5, where they had the opportunity to have
their questions answered and contribute to this groundbreaking mission.

The next opportunity for students to participate in the Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest will be
in May of 2008.

More information on the Cassini-Huygens mission can be found at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov,

and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency
and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington,
D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

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