When 21 girls in fourth through seventh grades return to school in a few weeks, they'll have a unique answer to the perennial question, "What did you do last summer?" They can reply, "I went to Mars."
At least virtually.
The girls attended a weeklong space camp at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, called "Mission to Mars."
Engineering professor David Meredith has been running space camps for 20 summers. Twenty years ago, he started a space shuttle camp; Mission to Mars followed a year later.
"I started this after the Challenger disaster," Meredith said. The space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after take off on Jan. 28, 1986. It carried Christa McAulffe, a school teacher, in addition to the professional astronauts.
"We keep doing it for the kids," he said.
He limits the space camps to girls because "girls are under-represented in engineering." Several participants have gone on to major in engineering and now work as professional engineers.
Before they could "land on Mars" and perform experiments, the girls spent several days learning about the planets in the solar system and what makes Mars so unique. They performed Mars landings with a computer simulator and experiments with glove boxes. Because many skills are required of astronauts, they learned to identify rocks, use a surveyor's transit and a metal detector. They identified samples returned by an unmanned lander and chose a site for landing.
On the last day of the camp, three teams landed on Mars, wearing uniforms with NASA patches, gloves, working headsets and helmets. Each team had a captain, a videographer, a geologist, a biologist, a surveyor, a meteorologist and a metals specialist. They took samples and planted an American flag on the planet's surface, conveniently located outside the engineering building.
Those scientific teams made history. They explored Mars in the rain. "It hasn't rained on Mars in 40 million years, and you were there. You made history." Meredith told the girls as he showed them photographs of their missions. "Crews, you did an awesome job." He added later that this was the first time rain has fallen on landing day, but the girls carried on undeterred.
The girls were interested in science before the mission, but now they have had some experience with hands-on engineering.
Shaye Traynor, 9, of Connellsville, attends Zachariah Connell Elementary School. This was her first Mission to Mars. "I like science. I liked using the robot. It was in a glove box and you had to make it pick up stuff using the controls. I thought this was going to be more about going to space, but it was about engineering. When I grow up, I want to be a paleontologist."
Several girls have enjoyed the camps so much they came back for more.
Abbie Siecinski, 11, of Mt. Pleasant, attends Conn Area Catholic School. "I've always been interested in math and science," she said. "I've been doing some engineering projects, making some building kits. I liked learning about the planet Mars and how much there is still to learn about it. I came to the space shuttle camp last year. I want to be a civil or an aerospace engineer."
Sidney Anderson, 10, of Uniontown, attends Verna Montesorri School. This is her third Mission to Mars and third year of space shuttle camp. "It's really fun, she said. "We learn a lot. I've learned more about the planets and gases and metals and rocks." She has several careers in mind. "I might want to become an engineer, but right now, I want to be a doctor and a fantasy writer."
Sidney said she slightly prefers the space shuttle camp, "because we pretend to fly the shuttle. I want to come back next year. I like science."
Ally Pritts, 11, of Mt. Pleasant, also attends Conn Area Catholic.
"I've been to the space shuttle camp once. I liked the one last year so much, I wanted to try this one. The best part was that we got to pretend to go to Mars and use the instruments. The surveying instruments, the thermometer, the humidity measuring instrument. I'm interested in science and math and I want to be an engineer."
Ally has already decided what kind of an engineer she wants to be: "I want to be a roller-coaster engineer, a design engineer."
Larger text
Smaller text
Print this article
E-mail this article
