Chantilly — Rocky Run 7th grade student Nidhi Nagireddy was recently selected to be an “NASA Cassini Scientist for a Day.” Nidhi was among 11 students to be named a Cassini Scientist as part of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn which was launched in 1997; 1,125 students from across the country in grades 5 to 12 participated in the essay contest. Students chose one of three target areas for Cassini’s camera: Saturn’s F ring, Saturn’s moon Titan, or the north pole of the planet Saturn itself. The students wrote their essays explaining why they thought their chosen picture would yield the most scientific rewards.
The winning essays were selected by a panel of Cassini scientists, mission planners and educators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Nidhi and the other winners and their classes were invited to participate in a videoconference to pose questions about Saturn to the Cassini scientists and engineers.
Nidhi wrote in her paper, “As a scientist, I would be hard pressed to choose between studying Saturn’s F Ring, Titan’s northern polar region, or the hurricane at Saturn’s north pole with all three options being intriguing subjects of study. But with Cassini, which arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, only having around 4 percent of its maneuvering propellant left to burn, we have to choose wisely.”
On May 29, Nidhi and several of her classmates, and her science teacher, Jeffrey Sejour, gathered around a large projection screen showing the three Cassini scientists and the other winners from around the country as they conducted a Q-and-A for an hour.