NASA Astromaterials
Sharing unique, often extraterrestrial, NASA Science content with learners of all ages.
Team Mission
NASA’s Astromaterials team facilitates efficient and effective sharing of unique NASA assets and Science Mission Directorate (SMD) content with students, educators, the public, the scientific community and the SMD Science Activation Collective and their audiences. Our assets include extraterrestrial sample collections: Apollo lunar samples, meteorites, cometary and interstellar dust, solar wind, samples from asteroids Itokawa, Ryugu, and Bennu (coming soon!), Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and specialized research and curation laboratories.
Students NEED to see science at work and the fact that two of the presenters were Hispanic was WONDERFUL because 100% of the students at our school are Hispanic!
What does your team hope to achieve?
The NASA Astromaterials team aims to share our unique NASA assets in order to generate excitement, enhanced knowledge, and awareness of NASA and NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Science and Exploration. This is primarily achieved by providing the latest NASA science content through virtual (webinars) and in-person connections with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and sharing Astromaterials samples while participating in events including NASA booths at educator (formal and informal) and scientific conferences. We also will continue to leverage and enhance our efforts by building partnerships and collaborations in sharing our unique NASA assets with the SMD Science Activation Collective and their audiences. Currently, our Astromaterials assets include samples from other worlds such as lunar samples collected by Apollo astronauts, and meteorites (from Mars, the Moon, Vesta, and other asteroids) collected in Antarctica as part of the Antarctica Search for Meteorite (ANSMET) expeditions. Our Astromaterials collections also include samples collected from comet Wild 2, interplanetary dust, solar wind samples, cosmic dust, and samples returned from asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, collected by the Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 spacecraft, missions led by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Future additions to the Astromaterials collections include samples from asteroid Bennu collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft with an expected return to Earth in 2023.
We thoroughly enjoyed this [webinar] experience. The opportunity to engage with a real scientist working in such a thrilling capacity is immeasurable.
Join us as we share NASA’s Science Mission Directorate science, experiences, discoveries, and people involved with NASA’s Astromaterials collections, research, and exploration.
