Cassini's Scientist for a Day program

NASA's Cassini project has conducted a series of innovative “Scientist for a Day” outreach sessions with great success. Individual students and classrooms are presented, via the Cassini web site, with a selection of images that could be taken by the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Student essays are submitted indicating their preferred image, along with a detailed description of why that image was selected, often drawing heavily from material found elsewhere in the Cassini web resources. Winners from different age categories are chosen, and the selected images are sequenced. Very soon after the images reach the ground, winning classrooms are invited to participate via tele- and video-con with key Cassini scientists and engineers, where interactive discussions take place. This program has been very successful and is considered a key outreach highlight of Cassini and JPL in general. It reaches a significant number of students, involves them directly in image planning, and engages them in a highly interactive and inspirational environment requiring detailed study and creative thought.