From: The Concord Review

The awards were presented at the New England History Teachers Association's Kidger Reception at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, in the afternoon on Tuesday, March 12, 2002.

Each Emerson Prize laureate received a check for $3,000, and a copy of David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, along with the letter of award. Past Emerson awards have gone to high school students from Czechoslovakia, Washington, D.C., Florida, California, Vermont, New Zealand, Utah, Massachusetts, Russia, Washington State, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Illinois, Japan, and New York.

Founded in 1987, The Concord Review, the first and only quarterly journal in the world for the academic work of secondary students, has published 49 issues with 539 essays (average 5,000 words) by students of history in forty-two states and thirty-three other countries. These exemplary essays have been distributed to subscribers throughout the United States and in thirty-two other countries.

Diane Ravitch, Senior Research Scholar at New York University and former Assistant Secretary of Education has said: "The Concord Review provides a splendid forum for the best student work in history. It deserves the support of everyone in the country who cares about improving the study of history in the schools." Eugene D. Genovese, President of The Historical Society, has said, "That you are performing a valuable service to American education goes without saying…With each issue of The Concord Review I feel better about the future of American education and of our profession." Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Historian, has said: "The Concord Review offers young people a unique incentive to think and write carefully and well…The Concord Review inspires and honors historical literacy. It should be in every high school in the land."

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
National Writing Board
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, MA 01776 USA
(800) 331-5007
http://www.tcr.org
fitzhugh@tcr.org
 
 

From: The Planetary Society

Students Lucas Möller, 13, and the team of Kelly Trowbridge, 15, and Jessica Sherman, 15, won the opportunity in The Planetary Society's Nanoexperiment Challenge to have their experiments built for flight on a future mission to Mars. The Nanoexperiment Challenge is now named SNOOPY, the acronym for Student Nanoexperiments for Outreach and Observational Planetary Inquiry.

"SNOOPY gave students a chance to make something directly for Mars exploration," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. "Our goal is to involve more people in the adventure of planetary exploration - and designing an experiment for future human exploration is the grandest adventure of all."

The Planetary Society held the contest in 1999 in cooperation with the Mars Environmental Compatibility Assessment (MECA) Experiment team and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Young people worldwide were invited to submit proposals and prototypes for the first student-designed experiment on Mars. The SNOOPY experiments were required to be consistent with MECA's Mission: to help us better understand how humans will be able to live on Mars.

SNOOPY Experiments
Möller, from Moscow Junior High School in Moscow, Idaho, submitted an experiment to measure the angle of avalanche of Martian dust. Trowbridge and Sherman, students at Lansing High School in Lansing, New York, designed an experiment to test how textured copper will weather in the dust-filled Martian atmosphere.

The experiments were originally to be incorporated into the MECA experiment package, which contained patches designed to test how the Martian environment affects different materials, including spacesuit fabrics. MECA and SNOOPY were originally scheduled to fly on the cancelled Mars Surveyor 2001 lander mission. The SNOOPY experiments are now ready to hitch a ride on an alternate mission. Possibilities could include Britain's Beagle 2 on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission, France's Netlander, or NASA's Mars landers or Scout missions.

SNOOPY results had to be something that could be observed by the camera located on the robotic arm of the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander and require no power or commands from the spacecraft. From the prototypes submitted, two were selected for construction for flight testing.

Experiments had to be compact enough to fit within a cylinder that was one (1) centimeter in diameter by one (1) centimeter in height. Total mass allowance was three (3) grams or less. Plus, the experiments needed to be self-contained, since no power from the lander would be available to power the student experiments.

The Planetary Society funded the building of the actual flight units, including the cost of materials, construction and testing. Visionary Products, Inc. of Utah built the flight test units.

The results of both experiments have importance to future Mars exploration. Dust in the harsh Martian environment is hazardous to the operation of equipment. Knowing the angle that Martian dust avalanches off surfaces, would allow engineers to design machines or solar panels that would allow dust to fall off and not affect them. The textured copper experiment will help show how suitable the metal is for use on Mars by measuring the rate of corrosion and oxidation in the Martian atmosphere, as well as how dust settles on its surface.

MECA Advisers
MECA team advisors for SNOOPY include Kimberly Kuhlman of JPL, J. R. Marshall of the SETI Institute, A. M. Waldron and C. A. Batt of the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell University, Michael Hecht of JPL and Tom Meloy of West Virginia University, the Principal Investigator for MECA. Martin Towner of Open University was also an advisor for SNOOPY.

THE PLANETARY SOCIETY:
Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded The Planetary Society in 1980 to advance the exploration of the solar system and to continue the search for extraterrestrial life. With members in over 140 countries, the Society is the largest space interest group in the world.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
For more information about The Planetary Society, contact Susan Lendroth at (626) 793-5100 ext 237 or by e-mail at susan.lendroth@planetary.org.

The Planetary Society - http://planetary.org
65 N. Catalina Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91106-2301
Tel: (626) 793-5100
Fax: (626) 793-5528
E-Mail: tps@planetary.org