Hello again,

So it has been a busy few weeks! We had such a fun time visiting the Silver Spring Boys and Girls Club. We made a video about the Impact Experiment we did with them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5MRMHeHWsU

We're going to send this to the clubs nationwide so everyone can give it a try.

Our webinar was a really wonderful experience for me personally. It was so amazing to get to talk to kids who are so clearly interested and who have such great questions. I'd like to thank all the participants who joined us and stuck with us through all the technical difficulties. I'd also like to thank Andrea, Aaron, Grant, Cynthia, Krystal, Lai, Ian, CJ, Luke and Rob for being so awesome and working so hard to make the webinar a success. You guys rock! I was so impressed with you ability to adapt to the changing circumstances. I'd also like to thank Aaron and Grant for making that * amazing * video about robots. I thought it came out great. I was so disappointed that we didn't get to show them the whole thing at the webinar, but you guys have 148 views on youtube :D

Outreach work is something that I feel is extremely important. I think that it is our duty as scientists to tell the public about what we're doing, but especially so to young people. We have the chance to really get them interested in science for their whole life long. My biggest hope is that we reached some kids in our webinar and that, maybe they'll consider sciences more seriously. So I'm really excited that we got to do some outreach of our own.

I hope to get some follow up from the Boys and Girls Club which I am going to Blog about.

So once again thanks to everyone for making this a success!

Maggie

Outreach Projects!

Hey Everyone!~~

So in the past few weeks, we have done a couple outreach programs for the Boys and Girls clubs of America (BGCA)! The first outreach program was a few weeks ago on a friday afternoon. Several interns in the Lunar Planetary Science Academy arranged for a classroom experiment at the Silver Spring, MD BGCA. Using small wooden balls, styrafoam balls, and various rocks as meteors, and a container of sand and baking powder, the kids experimented on how to make impact craters! we observed the effect of dropping different size meteors, meteors with different masses, and the effect that the speed of the meteor has in relation to creating craters. The kids had a wonderful time, and asked many intriuiging questions of our interns! It was a great experience, not only for the kids but for the interns as well. Special thanks goes out to Dr. Cynthia Cheung, Andrea Balbas, and Maggie McAdam for setting this up!

Just last friday, several of the LPSA interns along with Dr. Cythina Cheung held a webinar for many different Boys and Girls Clubs all across the nation! there were over 800 students tuning into the webinar! We had a few minor technical difficulties, but once the webinar really got going, it wase a huge success! Several interns talked about there experience here at NASA as well as cool geological projects as well as cool robotics projects that are happening all over the world. Andrea Balbas gave a presentation on the field of Geology, and Aaron Silver & Grant Moore gave a presentation on the field of Robotics. These interns also answered many questions that the kids had, and boy did they have some great questions! We could tell that many students were very curious in science and this webinar may have really inspired them to continue learning. Special thanks goes out to Maggie McAdam & Dr. Cheung for organazing this large event, as there were a huge amount of students listening in to what our NASA interns had to say. There were a series of videos made for the students that were to be played at the begining of the webinar, but due to technical difficulties they were not able to be played. However, they were posted to YouTube for the student to view at a later time. Here are the links to the videos:





Maggie's Planetary Science Video

Aaron & Grant's Robotics Video (PT 1)
Aaron & Grant's Robotics Video (PT 2)

Be sure to check these videos out!


-Aaron

Sudbury Data!

Hey Everyone~~

We have complied together all of the data we took on our trip to sudbury. All 3 days of geological data are in the following PDF format ready for download, just click on the following link:

Click here to download the Data!!

-Aaron

Back to work

Hello again everyone,

Our trip is over and we all returned to work at Goddard. It felt strange to be back in the office after spending last week doing field work in Canada. I must say that I do miss it. I feel that it was a great bonding bonding experience for our group since it was nice to have the opportunity to work with different people. During our regular work day at Goddard we spend too much time with our respective teams working on our individualized projects and do not get to spend much time with everyone else. In addition to bonding I feel that we also gained lots of knowledge from it. Dr. Lowman was an excellent guide. Here I've included some pictures and a brief summary of some of the things we did during the last days of our expedition.
In one of my previous posts I mentioned that during the first day of our Sudbury expedition my team and I did radiometry. During the second day our teams switched tasks and we had the opportunity to do some geology. Our job was to collect samples, make observations and take measurements with the use of a Brunton compass. On the left you can see a picture of me and my team making observations of the rocks. Trying to come up with a good description turned out to be pretty hard sometimes. You have to pay very close attention to details.
The third day of our expedition was probably the best since it was also Canada Day! During most of the day we worked in the field as usual. I got a little tired of being the designated note taking person so I finally had the opportunity to have a little fun with instrumentation and do magnetics. People often assume that a mathematicians favorite instrument is a pencil and paper, but that's not true at all. As a mathematician myself I can say that I had a blast doing magnetics. Here's a picture of me using a magnetic susceptibility meter. It was fun!

After our final day of field work was over we went out for a nice dinner and then went out to celebrate Canada Day with some fireworks. As we were passing by the crowd of Canadian people, they told us that we were from America. We stared at each other for a bit wondering: "how they could possibly know we're from America?". We then noticed that most of us were wearing shirts with the names of our respective universities....we were so obvious! It didn't take a genius to figure out that we were from the US. After that we all got to sit down and relax while watching fireworks. Here you can see a picture of us waiting for the fireworks. (and take a look at our college shirts too :))
The next morning it was time to head back home to Maryland. It was a great adventure and learning experience that I will never forget. I would like to thank everyone that made this trip possible, especially our program manager, Cynthia Cheung. I'm sure that it's an experience that we will all cherish forever. Not everyone gets to say that they went to Canada to do field geology with the respected Dr. Lowman as well as work with a bunch of amazing interns from all over the US that have a passion for space. Even though I have been through quite a few NASA internship programs (including NASA Academy), I feel that I will never forget the LPS Academy group. I feel that the NASA Lunar and Planetary Sciences Academy is an extraordinary program that has the potential to become one of the best NASA internship programs. I appreciate the efforts of everyone that made this program possible and hope that others have the opportunity to be part of this amazing journey during the years to come.

Sincerely,

-Lisha

The week after...

Well it is the Monday following our return to the states last Thursday, and strangely enough, I have to admit I miss Canada. The environment up there was great and even despite the massive amounts of mosquitoes I would consider this trip a huge success. We not only got ate alive by the swarms, but we also got a good crash course on Geology. Through grade school I never really took a Geology class so I had no idea what Breccia was or anything. In three short days, Dr. Lowman had given us a great crash course on Geology and I know for a fact, that I will never look at rocks the same again. I never really gave the rocks along the side of the road in West Virginia much thought as I drove by them daily, but now I'm going to be wondering just what all was involved with forming the mountains that I drive through daily as they have been blasted and cut through to make the roads more manageable to traverse. Along with all the breccia, basaltic dykes, geiger readings, and magnetic susceptibility readings, I also had a few chances to go off the path with fellow interns and enjoy what was going on back in the forests a bit in Canada.
It truly was beautiful in Sudbury! I don't know of about everyone else, but whenever I tend to think of Canada, I think of the wilderness and evergreens as far as the eyes can see, and THAT is exactly where we were and what we all got to see. It was quite the thrill though to have to hug up against the rocks and guardrails to avoid the traffic at times.

Overall, looking back on this trip, I am very glad that we did what we did. I will admit I was a little skeptic at first but that was changed after the first few hours out on site learning the ropes of what we would be doing for the next three days. I can't wait to go back to Canada.

CJ

Breccia Is not Just Breccia

It is beautiful here at the Sudbury Basin but all of the gorgeous vegetation is covering our data. We hunt for data that comes in the form of rocks. We are confined to the world of road cuts where large sections of rock are cut open to a steady stream of passing traffic. These road cuts yield a great side benefit for geologists, they let us see 3D relationships in rock structures that would otherwise be impossible to analyze without doing some dynamite blasting of our own. As you might guess, dynamite blasting for geology is not looked upon favorably or funded like new roadways. So here in Sudbury we have spent much of our time plastered against interesting rock structures on the sides of busy highways.

We are looking for signs of an ancient asteroid impact. Geologists look for signatures in the rock record such as mineral content, fractures, and structural relationships between different rock types. Here at the Sudbury Basin the geology before and after the impact is complex. It lies within the bounds of ancient mountain roots from the Greenvillian mountain building event as well as the more recent deformation that left the crater itself more elliptical than circular. The rock types involved include meta-sedimentary, intrusive-igneous, meta-igneous, shocked metamorphic, and extrusive igneous among others. When compared to the more simple structure of Meteor Crater that is nearly pristine in appearance and is located solely in sedimentary rock, interpretation of Sudbury Crater is challenging to say the least. Difficult scientific interpretations always seem to lead to scientific disagreements.

Our expedition leader, Paul Lowman, believes the size of the crater has been over estimated and thus the size of the asteroid creating it also over estimated. So we hunt for a particular rock that Dr. Lowman believes has been mis-catagorized. Breccia is a type of rock made up of a variety of other angular to subangular rocks. Sudbury is known for this type of rock that was created in abundance as the energy of the impact shattered parts of the lithosphere and melted other sections. The result is a rock of shattered parts held together by other melted rocks. However, this is not the only way breccia can be formed. Lowman believes that some of the Sudbury breccia was created by process after the impact and not directly caused by it.

So we hunt for breccia. We trace it back in formations and try to find its contact with other rocks. We hunt for cross cutting dykes made of basalt that may have pulled off chunks of rocks it flowed through before cooling. We have collected many great samples and documented many great sites. We have taking magnetic susceptibility reading and radiation readings. After all of the data has been analyzed, we may have a good answer or just a new set of questions. Such is the journey of a scientist.

-Andrea

Hello Everyone!

I have been unable to post anything until now due to computer issues, so I thought that I would give a quick summary of what I was up to during our trip.

On my first day of this trip I worked with the Geiger counter measuring radiation from the rock surfaces. I got to learn how to use a Geiger counter and collected data on the average number of particles released from a certain area of rock over a minute.

The next day, I worked determining the magnetic susceptibility of the tock in different outcroppings outside of the Sudbury Impact Crater. We found that the magnetic susceptibility greatly varied within just one rock due to the heterogeneous nature of the rock itself. Different types of rock had different magnetic susceptibilities. There is Breccia, which is a combination of a lot of different rock types in one rock. There’s the Diabase Basalt which seemed to be fairly magnetically susceptible. The most magnetically susceptible rock seemed to be the granite. This is due to the high levels of potassium in the rock.

As for yesterday, we all alternated with the different equipment and measurements to take throughout the day. I really enjoyed finding the Breccia while working on collecting rock samples. There doesn’t seem to be as much of it, and it is the rock type that is indicative of high velocity impact. So it is really exciting when you find good samples of the Breccia. On the first day I found a good sample of a shatter cone. Essentially the high pressure of the high velocity impact causes the rock to form into cone like structures which point towards the site of the impact. This is similar to any glass like material shattering. We found similar shatter cones later the same day where dynamite was once used to blow away the mountain side for mining. The cones all pointed towards the hole where the dynamite was originally placed.

On the way to the air port today, we passed by a lot of outcroppings and I couldn’t help thinking about the types of rock that each formation was formed from and the structure. When we visited the French River on our way to the airport, I immediately recognized the basalt dikes and some of the rock types present. I few days ago, I would have thought nothing of it.

Other than that, I have really had fun climbing all of the outcrops!

~Leva

Last Day in Canada.....

Hello Everybody!

Today is officially the last day we are all here in Canada. I just wanted to leave here on a good note and write some of the highlights of the trip.

On the first day of our expedition, we got the opportunity to see Onaping Falls. It was a lot of fun hiking our way through the trail to get to the bridge that overlooked the amazing waterfalls. But other than that, we explored other outcrops of breccia in the area. With Dr. Lowman’s expertise, the group gained a lot of insightful information about the formation of the rocks in that area and what we should look out for.

During the second day, I took more pictures of different types of rocks that we observed along the way. I also captured plenty of photos of the group which I will post when we get back into the States. We also got the opportunity to see a big nickel which is by a big mine in Canada. This was a fun activity we got the chance to do in order to get away from the rain and mosquitoes.

Lastly, the third and final day of the expedition was not as strenuous as the previous days of data collecting and rock sampling. But all in all, I still learned a lot and got the opportunity to celebrate Canada Day. We all ate a nice dinner and we saw some good fireworks in the end.

I would just like to thank Dr. Paul Lowman for sharing some of his knowledge to us and showing us the back routes to different sites. Another thank you goes out to our wonderful program manger, Cynthia Cheung, who has done an outstanding job of keeping everybody together and unharmed. Also, thank you Robert Damadeo for helping organize the event for everyone to have a good time. Finally, I would like to thank all the people who contributed to this amazing trip to make it possible.

Krystal Mike

PS - Keep look out for pictures! I will post them ASAP!

Great Success!

It's the end of a busy expedition, and I'd like to reflect on what we've all experienced. One of my goals is too know a little bit about every branch of science, and now I can add geology to that list of scientific fields that I've been exposed to. Our exploration of the Sudbury Basin and its various features has been a whole new experience. Finding examples of breccia, basaltic dikes, and shatter cones, as well as understanding to some degree why they are significant has been very satisfying. There are alot of fun aspects to field geology that really added to this trip. Climbing the outcrops and boulders keeps the process interesting. We didn't just record scientific data, we really had to work for it by physically going to each site and getting the instruments in to position at each notable feature. Although I don't have the expertise to formulate or pass judgment on geological theories based on our observations, it's cool to know that we are participating in an ongoing scientific process of determining the true nature and extent of the impact crater. Dr. Lowman has been very impressive, with his absolute familiarity with the both the area and the rocks and minerals that we encounter. His ongoing vigor and enthusiasm really helps to motivate us all. Our excursion is done for this summer, but I know that this won't be the last time I scan an outcrop in search of breccia, or curse the bugs and the rain that are getting in the way as I hammer away at seemingly industructible granite.

Hello all!

Hello all! Andrew here...
So the expedition is coming to a close. What a past couple of days it's been! We got to explore some of Canada and learn about geology! First off I want to thank Dr. Paul Lowman and Dr. Cynthia Cheung for planning this fine trip. Thank you both very much! And thank you again Cynthia for the last meal! It was wonderful.

This trip is my first in Canada, and I certainly won't forget it. We ran into some troubles with rain, but thanks to ponchos and garbage bags we made it out alive. I learned quite a bit about geology and how it is performed in the field. I would say that was the best part. The worst part was by FAR the mosquitoes...I will let this link explain it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PDlq9Z3wp0&fmt=18

I would also like to thank our wonderful bus driver who drove us all around the countryside and stayed in good spirit. We appreciate it!

-Andrew

Sudbury Day Two

Greeting,

I think the most important thing I learned today is that Canadians make awesome donuts, especially at Tim Hortons!

One thing that strikes me about studying the impact site is how complex the geological history here is. Everything I have studied so far in class about geology is clear cut. Because this site is so old and because it has had many events take place here, it is very difficult to come to a definitive conclusion about the order and magnitude of the geologic events that took place here. The first stop we made today did help with this. The picture I posted shows a cross cutting dike, the dark line through the light granite. This shows that the basalt dike intrusion came after the granite formation, this is from the law of superstition. The outcrop we looked at showed two rock formations of granite and basalt, but this dike defiantly showed that the basalt cut the granite, as opposed to the opposite way around. Information such as this can help determine the sequence and history of the site, and help determine the size of the impacting meteorite.

Stephen