Preparing for Mars

I just wrapped up the school year, graduated my 27th class of students and closed up my classroom for the summer! Now it's time for a field trip to spend some time being a student myself! With the support of the Personal/Professional enrichment grant that I received from my school, I will be able embark on some space exploration adventures during 2014-15... The first begins tomorrow!
I am very fortunate to be one of 40 teachers from 14 different states and 2 countries chosen to participate in this summer's Mars Education Teachers Symposium at Arizona State University.
Tomorrow my adventure to Mars begins...

• Day 0: travel & site-seeing
• Day 1: Mars Space Flight Facility, School of Earth and Space Exploration - Arizona State University
• Day 2-4: geologic/astrobiological sites in northern AZ, including: Old Indian Salt Mine, Grand Canyon, Mars Rover Analog Field Sites, Meteor Crater, Bell Rock, Montezuma's Well & Montezuma's Castle, Sunset Crater, and Lowell Observatory
• Day 5: Mars Space Flight Facility, School of Earth and Space Exploration - Arizona State University
• Day 6: site-seeing & travel home

As if all this weren't enough, I also hope to visit Camelback Mountain/Echo Canyon. My Maths friends might have an idea why... This is the childhood home of one of my math heros, Julia Robinson who laid the groundwork for the proof to Hibert's Tenth. I want to play with some number patterns at the foot of a saguaro cactus. (Maybe one of my AZ Space Sisters can help me out with this one?)
Of course there is also the promise of those dark, clear AZ skies! I think that is the only regret of the trip, there is no room in the luggage for my telescope! But I do have those amazing Celestron Cometron 12x70 binoculars that are part of the "Where do you Celestron?" prize package!
Follow along as I embark on this adventure, it's going to be a lot of fun!

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