Students Work Alongside Scientists to Test Mars Rover

NASA's 2003-2004 Mars Exploration Rovers and associated Athena Science Payload will provide an exciting opportunity to get students and the public involved in Mars exploration. One outreach component, the Athena Student Interns Program, will directly engage high school students in scientific discovery on Mars by incorporating the students into the mission s science team. The Athena Student Interns Program, based on the successful LAPIS program, was prototyped during the FIDO rover field trials that took place in the Arizona desert and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in August 2002 (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/fido). Use of a participatory evaluation process allowed mid-course corrections to be made to the program and provided the model for mission-related outreach.