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By KALEY LYON
Hays Daily News
More than 30 students of all ages gathered at Fort Hays State University's Tomanek Hall on Tuesday evening for a night of extraterrestrial exploration.
Don Sweetnam, NASA's project manager for the Genesis project, delivered a lecture titled "Exploring Our Solar System: What are we made of?"
"Now that Pluto's no longer a major planet, I've been to all the major planets," said Sweetnam, who lives in Pasadena, Calif. "And it's been kind of a fun ride."
Sweetnam's career focuses on robotic space missions, and through projects such as Genesis and Voyager, he's virtually toured and collected data throughout the solar system.
His two-day tour of Hays included presentations at Thomas More Prep-Marian High School, FHSU, Kennedy Middle School and Hays High School. The tour is part of a public outreach campaign provided for in Genesis project funding.
This was Sweetnam's first visit to Kansas. The idea was to extend the outreach, which has been available in several metropolitan areas, to more rural parts of the country, he said.
Public response has been positive, and he's enjoyed presenting to local youth, he said.
"The really young kids tonight, that's what I like about young kids. They see things, and they get curious and they start asking questions," Sweetnam said. "And that's what it takes to want to do this kind of stuff when you grow up, is that curiosity, that interest in finding out something new each day."
The lecture took attendees on a virtual tour through space, from the sun to the moon, and examined scientific findings of the different elements found on each surface.
Comets, asteroids and meteorites also were discussed, and attendees even had a hands-on opportunity to examine space material. Several artifacts, including a small meteorite discovered in Argentina and several pieces of material from Genesis, were borrowed from Johnson Space Center, located near Houston, for the occasion.
While Sweetnam has given many similar presentations during the past few years, these artifacts never before had been released for these public lectures. Hays was the first, he said.
The Genesis spacecraft was launched in 2001 to obtain measures of solar isotopic abundances, and landed three years later in Utah.
"We're trying to understand the history of our solar system," Sweetnam said. "What Genesis is trying to do is piece together what has happened in our solar system over the last 4.6 billion years."
The event was sponsored by the FHSU Science and Mathematics Center, Student National Science Teachers Association and the FHSU Astronomy Club. Following the speech, refreshments were available at the Plymouth Schoolhouse, and visitors also had the opportunity to view the skies from the FHSU observation deck.
Jacinta Behne, a graduate of TMP-Marian, helped bring the event to Hays. Behne, a principal consultant with Denver-based McREL, a contractor for NASA, said she didn't hesitate when it was time to bring the presentation to a rural area.
"I said, 'Have I got the place for you,' " she laughed.
"The thing that's really unique about the Genesis venture is that we have a principle investigator and a project manager who have this passion for education," Behne said. "I don't know another project manager who goes out and does public lectures like this. This mission has a real dedication to education."
In attendance was Brett Zollinger, Hays, who came with his son, Allen, because the child has expressed an interest in outer space, he said.
"I just wanted to show my son some of the things he might want to think about some day," Zollinger said. "And he's interested i n space, but it's always been dramatized in movies. So this is a more accurate look at space science."
Allen, who asked how many asteroids are in the asteroid belt, said he enjoyed the lecture, learned a few things and wants to pursue a career in science.
"It was fun," Allen said. "I want to be a rocket scientist."
Reporter Kaley Lyon can be reached at (785) 628-1081, Ext. 138, or by e-mail at klyon@dailynews.net.
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