Digital arts and photography students from Catonsville High School in Baltimore County enjoyed a special visit at NASA Goddard Space Flight Facility on Friday, November 18th, lead by Valerie Casasanto of University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Joint Center for Earth Systems & Technology (JCET). As part of UMBC’s Seeing Science program, students got a taste of NASA Science and the arts.
Students toured Goddard’s integration and testing facilities and viewed the cleanroom areas, where ICESat-2 (the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2, the 2nd-generation of the orbiting laser altimeter ICESat) and the James Webb Space Telescope are being integrated.
UMBC’s Dr. Chris Shuman, a JCET scientist based at Goddard, talked about Antarctica and ice science on the Hyperwall. The students also met with a NASA animator and saw an animated short film about ICESat-2. They watched scientific visualizations in an inflatable dome led by Greg Shirah, NASA Scientific Visualizer, who guided them through different Earth visualizations from the planetarium show Dynamic Earth. And finally, students got to experience ICESat-2’s altimeter interactive exhibit to get their heights measured.
Seeing Science is a year long project exploring the central role photography plays in defining and furthering science, and how images made in and about the sciences also impact public opinion and policy, science education, the arts, mass and social media. CADVC’s K-12 educational outreach program in collaboration with the Seeing Science project organized and underwrote the cost of the NASA visit.
Some additional pictures are on our Facebook folder and here below.
