The Education and Public Outreach Program for NASA’s Dawn Mission

Abstract

The Dawn mission's Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) program takes advantage of the length of the mission, an effort to maintain level funding, and the exceptional support of the science and engineering teams to create formal and informal educational materials that bring STEM content and modes of thinking to students of all ages. With materials that are based on researched pedagogical principles and aligned with science education standards, Dawn weaves together many aspects of the mission to engage students, teachers, and the general public. E/PO tells the story of the discovery of the asteroid belt, uncovers principles of physics behind the ion propulsion that powers the spacecraft, and explains what we can learn from the instrumentation and how the mission's results will expand our understanding of the origins of the solar system. In this way, we not only educate and inform, we build anticipation and expectation in the general public for the spacecraft's arrival at Vesta in 2011 and three years later at Ceres. This chapter discusses the organization, strategies, formative assessment and dissemination of these materials and activities, and includes a section on lessons learned.