"The Thrill of Discovery" was also the title of four hour professional development session conducted later the same day for local teachers and home schooling parents. Held at the Sci-Quest science center, thirty educators representing pre-K through high school learned about the Discovery missions and participated in demonstrations of activities they can do to teach their students about comets, engineering challenges, using spectral data in the classroom, searching for habitable planets, designing their own Discovery mission and more.

The participating Discovery mission educators and scientists were: Shari Asplund, Discovery Program Education and Public Outreach Manager; Jackie Allen and Kay Tobola from the Johnson Space Center (JSC) Astromaterials Curation Group; Dr. Carlton Allen, JSC Lunar Lab Curator; Jacinta Behne, Don Sweetnam and Dr. Judith Allton from the Genesis mission; Maura Rountree-Brown representing Deep Impact; Pamela Harman from the Kepler Mission; Stephanie Stockman from MESSENGER, and Dr. Cassandra Runyon from Moon Mineralogy Mapper.