PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Diane Ainsworth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 1996
LOS ANGELES ART STUDENTS PRESENT NEW MARS MURAL TO JPL
Young artists from the Academia de Arte Yepes in East Los
Angeles will present a dramatic and colorful painting of the
Roman god Mars as he rides across space in a horse-drawn chariot
to members of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in honor of the
space program's return to the red planet this week.
The students, ages 11-16, will present the 12-by-20-foot
mural to JPL Director Dr. Edward C. Stone, Norman Haynes, manager
of the Mars Exploration Directorate at JPL and Donna Shirley,
manager of the Mars Exploration Program Office at JPL. The brief
ceremony begins at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, Nov. 5, at
Spaceport Central, located inside Spaceport USA at the NASA
Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL.
The mural, entitled "Mars: Leading Students of the New
Millennium," was created to encourage greater science literacy
among the nation's youth. The mural depicts the Roman god Mars
reaching out of the mural with his right hand as a gesture to
join him in this voyage of exploration. His left hand holds the
reins of a team of multi-colored horses, which symbolize ethnic
diversity, pulling his space chariot across a super-imposed
rendition of the Orion nebula, where stars are born. Leading the
team of horses is the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which is
on a polar approach to the red planet, passing by its two tiny
moons, Phobos and Deimos. Mars Global Surveyor is set for launch
aboard a Delta II rocket at 9:11 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday,
Nov. 6, from launch pad 17 A at Cape Canaveral.
The students, their parents and Academia director George
Yepes were able to travel to Cape Canaveral with partial support
from public donations raised after Los Angeles television station
KCAL Channel 9 broadcast a feature on a Cassini mural presented
to the Laboratory in 1995 by the Academia to honor the upcoming
Cassini mission to Saturn. The Cassini mural hangs prominently in
JPL's von Karman Auditorium.
Dr. Cheick Diarra, educational outreach director in the Mars
Exploration Program Office at JPL, and a team of technical
members worked closely with the group of six students to furnish
scientific data and information to assist them in their artistic
endeavor. The students hail from the following Los Angeles area
schools: Bloomington High School, Ramona Convent High School,
Montebello High School, St. Mary's School and Salesian High
School.
The Mars mural will remain at Kennedy Space Center through
December and launch of NASA's second 1996 robotic mission to Mars
-- known as Mars Pathfinder -- before it is returned to its
permanent home at JPL.
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