Miff on Mars
Yes yes yes, I love science. And yes, I work in a nerdy institution - and I love it!
Yesterday I visited the Victorian Space Science Education Centre at which students can participate in a fully immersive 'Mission to Mars'. It is based at a public high school (Strathmore, I think?) and has only been open since July.
Students get a mission briefing and then split up into Mission Control and Astronauts. The astronaut kiddies dress up in full astronaut gear, including a blue tooth for communications, tools belts etc. and then go out onto a mock Mars landscape (created as realistically as possible). You even have to go through an air lock!
Here is me on the Mars landscape collecting bits of hematite. There were areas of perma-frost, soil to be cored and sampled, rocks to be chipped off and analysed, and satellite cameras to be set up. So cool.
The mission control kiddies had to give their astronauts instructions as to what to do. It was really well resourced (Govvie funding, of course) and would be such an awesome learning experience. I was jealous of the children!
Yesterday I visited the Victorian Space Science Education Centre at which students can participate in a fully immersive 'Mission to Mars'. It is based at a public high school (Strathmore, I think?) and has only been open since July.
Students get a mission briefing and then split up into Mission Control and Astronauts. The astronaut kiddies dress up in full astronaut gear, including a blue tooth for communications, tools belts etc. and then go out onto a mock Mars landscape (created as realistically as possible). You even have to go through an air lock!
Here is me on the Mars landscape collecting bits of hematite. There were areas of perma-frost, soil to be cored and sampled, rocks to be chipped off and analysed, and satellite cameras to be set up. So cool.The mission control kiddies had to give their astronauts instructions as to what to do. It was really well resourced (Govvie funding, of course) and would be such an awesome learning experience. I was jealous of the children!
posted by Miff at
1:30 pm
3 Comments:
Wow! I've never commented on a Martian's blog before.
Tell me, I know the rocks are red, but is the sky blue on Mars? Or black because the atmosphere is so thin? Or is it red because of red dust in the air?
(And does that bad dose of sunburn hurt?)
By
Anonymous, at 4:29 pm
The sky on Mars is orange (I think) because there is lots of dust suspended in the atmosphere, which scatters the white light from the sun more (the same reason our sunsets are orange).
The rocks are red as they are covered in iron oxide (rust).
Go team science!
Thankfully I didn't get sunburnt, but thanks for asking!
By
Miff, at 4:45 pm
You were clearly lying on the geek test and should have scored somewhere in the mid-80s.
By
Sherd, at 12:50 am
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