9 January 2003 — A free public lecture titled " 'Water Found on Mars' . . . The Story Behind the Headlines" will be given on 8 February by Christopher Shinohara and Heather Enos, managers with the Gamma Ray Spectrometer Odyssey Team in the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona. The lecture is the third of six consecutive Saturday-morning lectures during the 2003 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science. The series this year, titled "Beyond Earth: Living on Other Worlds," is designed to be a free minicourse for the enjoyment and education of residents in Central Pennsylvania communities. The lectures take place from 11:00 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m. in 100 Thomas Building on the Penn State University Park Campus.

Shinohara and Enos will discuss the extraordinary effort it takes to build and operate a successful science instrument for a mission to Mars, such as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter spacecraft and its Gamma Ray Spectrometer, which began mapping the Red Planet during February 2002. The instrument and its team of scientists recently were featured in news stories worldwide when data obtained by the spectrometer provided scientists with the best direct evidence yet available of water ice on the surface of Mars. During their lecture, Shinohara and Enos will share the recent "water ice" findings from the Mars Odyssey Mission and will explain what this discovery might mean for the future of Mars exploration.

Shinohara, who is the project manager of the 2001 Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer, has been working on missions to Mars at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory for almost 13 years. He has been an active participant in all aspects of several missions, including the very successful Pathfinder mission.

Enos is the business operations and outreach manager of the 2001 Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer. She began her career at the University of Arizona in 1991 in the biological sciences, then was lured by the excitement of Mars exploration to join the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in 1997 to work on the 2001 Mars Odyssey project. One of her areas of interest is the development of interactive activities that can teach teachers and students in grades 3 through 12 the spectroscopy techniques used on the Gamma Ray Spectrometer instrument and how these techniques contribute to its scientific discoveries.

The remaining events in the 2003 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science include:

• "What Price a Martian? Human Limits to Exploring the Red Planet" on 15 February by James Pawelczyk, assistant professor of physiology and kinesiology at Penn State and a NASA astronaut;
  
• "Settling the Moon: The Challenges and the Possible Rewards" on 22 February by Jim Burke, an aeronautical engineer with the the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an advisor to the Planetary Society; and
  
• "Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet within a Decade" on 1 March by Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society.
  

The Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science. Additional financial support for the Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science is provided by Pfizer Inc.

Thomas Building is located at the intersection of Pollock and Shortlidge Roads on the Penn State University Park Campus. Free parking is available in the Eisenhower Parking Deck behind Eisenhower Auditorium on Shortlidge Road. For more information or access assistance, contact the Eberly College of Science Office of Public Information by telephone at (814) 863-8453, by e-mail at science@psu.edu, or click on the web link at <http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/frontiers/>

[ B K K ]