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| Pictured here are two of four meteorites now calling SCC’s Jackson Campus home. |
Southwestern Community College has some new residents calling the Jackson Campus home.
They made quite the journey to get here - all the way from outer space in fact.
SCC is now home to four meteorites that Casey Deakins, SCC’s institutional development assistant, acquired from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
Deakins and Lynda Parlett, SCC’s executive director of institutional development, attended a conference in Titusville, Fla. where Deakins learned about the meteorites and was put in contact with the Planetary Science Institute.
“When I heard about the meteorites, I thought they would be a great thing for SCC to have, especially since we have the NASA projects going on around campus,” said Deakins.
SCC is entering year two of a five-year, NASA-funded grant through the Smoky Mountain STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) collaborative.
This collaborative has enabled SCC students and faculty to work on projects such as a high-altitude weather balloon, collecting data from around the area for NASA, a summer STEM academy for rising fifth through tenth-grade students, and classes that are incorporating NASA science into their daily instruction.
“This upcoming year is an exciting one for SCC,” said Matt Cass, SCC’s physics instructor and science department chair. “We have NASA-based projects going on around campus, and they are leading up to the 2017 Solar Eclipse which will happen on Aug. 21.”
In addition to the solar eclipse, NASA is currently working on the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer asteroid sample return) mission.
OSIRIS-Rex, which was launched on Sept. 8 and will return to Earth in 2023, is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and send it to Earth to be studied.
Deakins hopes to become an OSIRIS-REx ambassador.
“I would love to use the meteorites in the classrooms when I go visit the local elementary and high schools and talk about the NASA projects at SCC and the OSIRIS-REx mission,” said Deakins.
For right now though, the meteorites will be used in SCC’s lunch and learn discussions.
For more information about NASA projects at SCC, contact Cass at 828.339.4384 or mcass@southwesterncc.edu.
For more information about SCC and the programs it offers, call 828.339.4000, visit www.southwesterncc.edu, or stop by your nearest SCC location.
