I am a retired public school science teacher. During the early 2000s I was the facilitator for a program sponsored by by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and the LIU19 in Luzerne county PA. The program’s goal was to promote interest in science among gifted middle school students. Our students won national competitions sponsored by NASA and sent student generated experiments into space on the space shuttle .
In 2001 I was recruited to apply for the Teacher As Scientist program being run from Goddard. The TAS program placed teachers into real NASA investigations. I was placed on the Crater Team for the Ituralde crater investigation. A land anomaly in Bolivia was thought to be caused by a meteorite impact some 5000 years ago. Our team found evidence that the circular depression was due to such an impact.
The experience prompted a two decade interest in the study of earth’s impact craters and meteorite collecting.