Several key engaging projects mean that the Cassini Outreach Team is very deserving of the 3rd UMSF Opportunity Award, for taking the public to Saturn with the release of raw images, and eight inspiring rounds of the Cassini ‘Scientist for a day’ program.

It can be hard to explain the what, where and why of a school-bus sized spacecraft a billion miles from home. However, the Cassini outreach team has excelled by deploying the excitement of planetary exploration in so many inspiring ways.   The release of raw imagery onto the web as a successful proposal by an outreach team rather than a science team is a huge hurdle that has helped take the impetus of the MER image release policy, and render it virtually mandatory across all space science missions.

These images have resulted in many enthusiast producing movies and mosaics that might otherwise take several weeks, months or indeed never make it into the public domain.

It’s not simply the release of raw images that makes the Cassini Outreach team stand-out. Results from the Reading, Writing and Rings program are genuinely moving and should act as an inspiration for anyone trying to use space science in an educational context. The simple lesson that planetary exploration doesn’t just have to feed into STEM subjects is a valuable one that every space agency and NASA centre can learn from.

Finally, taking school children and challenging them to make a science case for a specific observation in the Scientist for a Day program is not only excellent outreach, it’s participatory exploration.  They have learnt not only about Saturn and her moons, but about sound scientific thinking and the principles in proposing and receiving these observations. Those involved will remember just what extraordinary experiences aerospace engineering and planetary science can be with the help of the images they took a billion miles from home.

So it’s not just for one thing that the Cassini team have won this award, but for a spectrum of projects that reach out and engage the informed public, students and teachers in some brilliantly unique ways.