CHS Artists Contribute to NASA

 

 

Ms. Turner's art students were quick to jump on board last month when NASA invited artists to send their artwork on a journey aboard NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.  OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in September and travel to the asteroid Bennu.  This will be the first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for study.

 

The #WeTheExplorers campaign invited the public to take part in this mission by expressing, through art, how the mission's spirit of exploration is reflected in their own lives.  Submitted works of art will be saved on a chip on the spacecraft.

 

"The development of the spacecraft and instruments has been a hugely creative process, where ultimately the canvas is the machined metal and composites preparing to launch in September," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  "It is fitting that this endeavor can inspire the public to express their creativity to be carried by OSIRIS-Rex into space."

 

Contributing Centennial artists took the opportunity to connect art and science as they learned about the details of the mission and the orbiting asteroid Bennu.  The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launches in 2016, rendezvous with asteroid (101955) Bennu in 2018, and returns its sample to Earth in 2023.

 

To see all of the contributions, including those from our CHS artists, visit #WeTheExplorers on Twitter.