SATURN
EDUCATOR GUIDE
Letter to Educators
Dear Fellow Educators:
One of the most remarkable gifts of being human is the ability
to experience the beauty, the richness, and the insights that
accompany the fields of literature, art, music, architecture,
and the sciences. Indeed, these areas of human endeavor are like
vast oceans that meet and mingle in many places. Several streams
of interconnection between mathematics and music, or between
art and architecture, are well known, but there are yet new voyages
that lead us from the currents in one ocean to those in another.
NASA's Cassini–Huygens mission to the magnificent ringed
planet Saturn is such a voyage.
The Cassini spacecraft's 4-year scientific tour of gigantic
Saturn and its 18 presently known moons will reveal new beauty,
richness, and insights on behalf of all humankind. Cassini was
launched in October 1997 and will arrive at the Saturn system
in 2004. The Saturn Educator Guide calls upon teachers and students
of widely varying interests to come along on this extraordinary
journey. You are invited to explore the role Saturn has played
in our culture over time and across the diverse oceans of human
interest. The Guide is the product of a collaborative venture
among scientists, engineers, teachers, and education researchers.
We hope we have synthesized the cutting edge of science, the
cutting edge of educational research, and practicality of use
in the classroom.
The Guide includes opportunities to use the contexts of Saturn
and the Cassini–Huygens mission to enrich your curricular
units in science. The lessons are grounded in the National Science
Education Standards and constructivist learning theory, as well
as enhanced by the excitement of real-life space science and
engineering. The Guide also offers highlights of the interconnections
between Saturn and other areas of human endeavor, such as art,
language, history, and mythology. We hope this unique blend will
enable a grander diversity of learners to share and benefit from
the excitement of Cassini– Huygens mission discoveries.
The international Cassini–Huygens mission is an exciting
culmination of centuries of human interest in Saturn. The mission
will no doubt resolve some of the most intriguing mysteries of
the Saturn system, and perhaps even provide insight into how
our own Solar System was formed. The mission team will receive
electronic signals from the spacecraft that our computers will
interpret to produce artful images for us all to explore and
enjoy, of scenes never before observed by human eyes as Cassini
extends our earthly senses to worlds that are a billion miles
away. Meanwhile, in keeping with the nature of the scientific
enterprise, the mission's investigations will raise many new
questions. You may rest assured that there will be many compelling
mysteries left for the Saturn explorers of the future!
-- The Cassini Education Outreach and Guide Development Teams
(from the Saturn Educator Guide Preface) |
