Morrisville Students Spent Some Time on Mars
Posted: Thursday, April 14, 2011 6:13 pm | Updated: 6:19 pm, Thu Apr 14, 2011.
Morrisville, we have a problem.
A NASA research vessel for five days has encountered communication problems or could be lost in space, and Team Zeus, also known as 30 fourth-graders from Morrisville Middle/Intermediate School, has the mission to locate “Distant Discovery” and its crew of two astronauts and bring them back safely to the “Mars research station.”
“We are staying focused on the mission,” said communication specialist Vincent Wolf, 10.
The year is 2080. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has permanent research teams based on the moon and Mars. From the bases, astronauts and scientists study the universe, including the possibility of life outside Earth. Exploration vessels regularly take off from the two bases for research.
This time, the research vessel was in the middle of exploring the outer regions of the solar system when it lost communication.
To help complete the mission, team members applied real space math and science. They communicated their progress to a NASA education representative, a flight director named Commander Romanic, who stayed connected with the students via teleconference from the “Earth Mission Control station.” She really was at a NASA-owned facility in West Virginia and connected to a Web camera to communicate with the students who were at the district’s conference room at Morrisville High School.
On “Mission Day” Thursday, Team Zeus worked from the “Mars Mission Control” waiting for the arrival of a rescue space ship with two astronauts launched from the moon station and due to stop on Mars to pick up rescue supplies. Five crates were needed.
“Where did you get five from?” Communication Team member Taryn Wright, 10, asked a teammate.
She reviewed some numbers on the laptop screen and said, “OK. That’s correct. Twenty divided by four is five, so five crates are needed.”
1 comment:
Two of my kids got to take part in this. They were pretty excited by it, by meeting a real NASA scientist, and it really seemed like a great learning opportunity. They were plotting the course of meteors that were destined to strike the moon (not really) and had to determine the probability of where they would hit, etc.
Not sure who lined up this opportunity but you have my thanks. It is interesting stuff like this that sparks imaginations and makes science and math fun.
Good stuff!
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