The Rosetta/Philae outreach team win Sir Arthur Clarke Award

We were happy to hear that the Rosetta/Philae outreach team won the Sir Arthur Clarke Award in the category of “Space Achievement – Education and Outreach”.

The Philae/Rosetta Outreach Team is comprised of people from all over Europe, including EJR-Quartz! As part of our contracts with the European Space Agency and DLR, we support the outreach activities for both the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander in the Rosetta Mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards have been presented annually in the UK since 2005 to reward outstanding contributions to space activities. This year’s awards were announced at the UK Space Conference Gala Dinner and Awards in Liverpool on Tuesday 14 July 2015. The Awards are sponsored by the UK Space Agency in collaboration with the British Interplanetary Society and Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

Upon announcing the prize winners, the British Interplanetary Society posted the following on its website about the team:

“The Rosetta/Philae Outreach Team turned a great scientific achievement into a really great popular science outreach achievement. They had the most engaged audience for a space event for a very long time, having created an extremely wide range of publicity material, from the amazing top-level science fiction/science fact introductory film ‘Ambition’, the detailed press kits, and the entertaining ‘Once upon a time’ cartoon videos, covering each campaign milestone. They produced brochures, models, and posters and put out a continuous stream of blog posts, tweets, hang-outs, and a series of ‘Comet Hunter’ videos on Euronews to keep everyone up-to-date with the mission status, the ever-changing state of Comet 67P/C-G, and the scientific results. They also made brilliant teaching/educational resources available, including a dedicated website, the primary and secondary lessons, and the fantastic Paxi alien educator.”

EJR-Quartz editors have played a key role in developing and running outreach material for both Rosetta and Philae. Since 2013, we have run the twitter accounts for ESA and DLR, with EQ’s Emily Baldwin and Karin Ranero Celius the primary voices of Rosetta and Philae, respectively. The Twitter accounts are now some of the most followed in the agencies – Rosetta has more than 348, 000 followers and Philae has over 451, 000.

Many of the press kits and articles, along with posts for the popular Rosetta blog, are prepared by EQ editors Emily, Karen O’Flaherty and Daniel Scuka.

Daniel and Emily, together with EQ’s Maria Bennet and Erica Rolfe, have also played a key role in the organising and presenting the numerous Rosetta-themed Google Hangouts throughout the mission to date.

Emily and Karen, together with their colleagues in the Communication, Outreach and Education Group in the Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, are also part of the team developing the scripts for the adorable cartoon adventures of Rosetta and Philae that are subsequently produced by Design & Data. Classroom resources are produced by EQ’s Anca Zinculescu and Joanna Holt, including a mini-site with educational material related to Rosetta.

Our editors have been working hard to communicate the brilliant science being done in this mission and we are proud to be a part of this wonderful team and to share this award with all those involved in the inspiring outreach of Rosetta and Philae.