Retiring Brunswick Junior High School science teacher Diane Bowen’s explorations have, for years, given her students a rare glimpse looking back the Earth from the cosmos.

Through satellite cameras on the International Space Station, Bowen’s students spied devastating photos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and took photos around the globe four times a year as part of a program with Sally Ride Science, an organization started by the first American woman to enter space to promote science education.

Now, Bowen’s students are turning their attention elsewhere in the sky.

Earlier this month, Bowen traveled with soon-to-be Brunswick High School freshmen Lexie Bernier and Courtney Grimes to Washington, D.C., joining a select group of 14 other students from the project — referred to as “MoonKAM,” or “Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students” — for an all-expenses-paid expo featuring top names from the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) and presentations from students on topics related to moon science.

And these aren’t your average science projects. Grimes and Bernier have taken images of the moon from two satellites, Ebb and Flow, orbiting approximately 80 miles from the lunar surface.

Bowen’s team was picked from a group of thousands of teams also participating in the Sally Ride Science project, which promotes education in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields.

Bowen takes pride in the role she’s played in inspiring a new generation of science and technology innovators. Some of her former students have gone on to work at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Google and on projects with NASA’s Hubble telescope.

Grimes and Bernier, the two budding scientists on this year’s mission with Bowen, focused on two NASA spacecraft working to create a highresolution map of the moon’s gravitational field, giving NASA investigators a better sense of just how Earth’s only natural satellite formed.

“It’s thought that there were once two moons and one was traveling faster than the other,” Bowen said. “The faster, smaller moon bumped into our moon and was absorbed, which is why the side we see is smooth and the other side is cratered.”

That theory, explaining why the moon has an uneven gravitational field, was one focus of Bernier and Grimes’ presentation.

But beyond the latest investigations in moon science, the students’ presentation also looked to the future, identifying lunar lava tubes, which Bowen said could provide a happy home for moon colonists.

“They think we might be able to build a base in it since there’s no atmosphere to protect us from radiation,” Bowen said.

At the D.C. conference, students also met with science stars such as Maria Zuber, who is NASA’s principal investigator in the current moon mission — called the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission — and Sally Ride.

Through the summer and beyond, Bowen said she’ll stay involved with the project in anticipation of an unprecedented event in August, when the satellites will be dropped down just 10 miles above the lunar surface and then crashed into the soil in an effort to discover traces of water.

“It’s never been done and will probably never happen again,” Bowen said. “We’ll be able to see the lunar module and astronauts’ footprints.”

After years of space exploration during her 17 years at Brunswick Junior High, bringing Bowen and her students to space shuttle launches and space investigations, the retiring educator said she’ll stay close to the school’s science program, take on some grant work in science education consulting, and enjoy time closer to home.

“I’m going to enjoy being a grandma for a little while,” Bowen said of her next mission into the future.

dfishell@timesrecord.com