[FPSPACE] Fw: Cornell Chronicle: Squyres wins Sagan medal

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From: Cornell Chronicle Online <cunews at cornell.edu>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 21:56:12 
To: <CUNEWS-PHYSICAL_SCIENCE-L at cornell.edu>; <CUNEWS-SCIENCE-L at cornell.edu>
Subject: Cornell Chronicle: Squyres wins Sagan medal

Chronicle Online e-News
 
 Squyres wins Carl Sagan Medal for public outreach
 http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct09/SquyresSagan.html <http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct09/SquyresSagan.html> 
 
 Oct. 5, 2009
 
 By Anne Ju
 amj8 at cornell.edu
 
 For his work making the Mars Exploration Rover mission a compelling 
 saga for millions of people, Steven W. Squyres, the Goldwin Smith 
 Professor of Astronomy and principal scientific investigator for the 
 mission, has received the 2009 Carl Sagan Medal from the American 
 Astronomical Society.
 
 The Sagan medal recognizes a planetary scientist for excellence in 
 public communication. Squyres will receive the medal during the AAS's 
 Division for Planetary Sciences annual meeting, Oct. 4-9, in Puerto 
 Rico.
 
 Quick to share credit with the entire Mars rover mission team at 
 Cornell and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Squyres said he has 
 always taken seriously the responsibility of giving people -- the 
 taxpayers who have bankrolled the mission -- a clear window into what 
 they are doing on Mars.
 
 "We feel very strongly that the people who pay have a real right to 
 find out in very clear, simple terms what they're getting for their 
 $900 million," Squyres said.
 
 Since January 2004, when the first rover, named Spirit, bounced down 
 on the red planet, the Rover team has maintained a publicly 
 accessible database of images taken by the rovers. Atypical of most 
 NASA missions, the rover mission has allowed people to access data 
 almost immediately. It was a conscious decision by the rover team, 
 Squyres said, to pipeline the data straight to the Web.
 
 "If I'm asleep and you're awake, you can see the pictures from the 
 rover before I do," he said. "And what that has done is it's really 
 enabled people to share in this voyage of exploration."
 
 Squyres hopes these efforts, including a Web site that provides 
 updates of rover activities, has inspired young people to pursue 
 careers in science and engineering.
 
 "NASA does all kinds of wonderful things in space, from cosmology to 
 gamma ray spectroscopy," Squyres said. "But try explaining gamma ray 
 spectroscopy to a third-grader. It's hard. But you know, these are 
 robots looking at rocks. It's not that complicated. What that means 
 is this mission is almost uniquely accessible to people."
 
 As a Cornell graduate student Squyres '78, Ph.D. '81, worked closely 
 with Sagan. "Carl really pioneered, in a very important way, the way 
 in which scientists interact with the media and the public," Squyres 
 said. "To receive an award that's named after him for trying to do 
 the same sort of thing that he did so brilliantly is a real honor."
 
 -- 
 
 
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