MAY 5, 2015

NASA's Dawn mission will host the flagship event for its "I C Ceres" space festival at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena on Saturday, May 9, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The free event is intended for all ages.

The first part of the event, an outdoor space expo, will take place at Caltech's Beckman Auditorium Mall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visitors can take a tour of our solar system, with booths featuring NASA missions, and learn how NASA communicates with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. Live educational stage demonstrations will take place every 30 minutes. Additional attractions include meteorites, rover wheels and other space hardware available to touch; virtual walks on the moon, Mars and asteroid Vesta; and face painting. Food will be available for purchase at onsite food trucks.

The second part of the event is a series of talks scheduled from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium. The first talk, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., is geared for a younger audience, while the talks after 2 p.m. are more appropriate for adults.

Speakers include:

-- Jim Green, Director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Carol Raymond, Dawn mission deputy principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

-- Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS REx mission principal investigator, University of Arizona, Tucson

-- Claudia Alexander, U.S. Rosetta project scientist, JPL

-- Alan Stern, New Horizons mission principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado

The talks, including a panel discussion about icy worlds, asteroids and comets, will also be broadcast live via Ustream at:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/i_c_ceres_bios.html

Image: NASA's Dawn mission will celebrate the exploration of Ceres with a festival called "I C Ceres" on May 9. Events will take place in multiple cities, with a flagship event, including a live webcast, in Pasadena, California.