Imagine a group of researchers living in a 12-room biodome on Mars. Their base is constructed in a lava tube, to protect the humans from radiation and other hazards. The researchers use aquaponics to cultivate plants and raise fish, and they “grow” their meat in an incubator, using cells they brought with them from Earth. The biodome has 17 elevators to take them between different sections. There’s even an exercise room with an indoor trampoline.
It might be science fiction for now, but students at Holland Elementary think it could one day be a reality. Their plan for a research center on Mars, built in the video game Minecraft, won a first-place award at Brevard Public Schools Destination Mars Challenge Day on Feb. 28.
“We are trying to show the challenges for maintaining homeostasis,” Holland team member Natalia Rojas said. “Mars is a lot different than Earth and there’s some things that can affect you on Mars that aren’t on Earth.”
About 145 sixth-graders from 14 elementary schools participated in the event, made possible by a $120,000 grant from Boeing. Microsoft and the Share Space Foundation were also major sponsors.
Dawn Bronstein, a technology integrator for BPS and one of the leaders of the Destination Mars Challenge, said the event was designed to expand on the district’s focus on Mars in the science curriculum this year.
“We posed four different missions that they had to address that fit in with our grade-level standards,” Bronstein said.
The high-tech challenges were: design a Mars biodome using Minecraft, a video game popular with middle schoolers and used in classrooms across the country; design a wearable tool – or iWear – using a DIY electronics kit called Adafruit; program Ozobots, which are pocket-sized robots, to follow a Mars rover course on a map; and build a kid-size model of a portion, or “pod,” of their biodome.
Each category had a first-place and two honorable mention winners. Holland won first place in the Minecraft Biodome competition, honorable mention in the Ozobot rover category, and was selected by popular vote for the event-favorite VIP Choice award.
Two other beachside schools – Gemini and Ocean Breeze – also participated. Ocean Breeze won honorable mention in the iWear category.
The team from Ocean Breeze designed their award-winning wearable scanner as a tool to detect bacteria, and printed it with a 3D printer. While it was all hypothetical, students took the subject seriously, speaking as if they were actually on the red planet instead of with their feet planted firmly on Earth at the school district’s Viera headquarters building.
“We found out that there might be harmful material on Mars,” team member Chris Sawyer said. “So before we get into our own capsule we will scan ourselves to make sure we don’t bring any harmful bacteria into the capsule.”
The nine Ocean Breeze students were part of Holly Mentillo’s gifted class, which meets every Tuesday.
“They had all the problems of building and living on Mars they had to take into account,” Mentillo said. “The research that they did was amazing. They were actually making the decisions of how to live on Mars.”
The Gemini team’s model pod was a soil and water mineral enrichment station that highlighted their plan to melt ice from a crater and extract minerals from the water to use as plant fertilizer. They theorized that they could also drink the water and use it to water the plants.
All the teams did extensive research, and based many parts of their projects on work they read about.
“Engineers at NASA and at the Kennedy Space Center are doing exactly what they’re doing,” Gemini science teacher and team sponsor Roger Cohen said. “This is real-world science.”
Several of the Gemini students also did science projects this year related to Mars, including one that tested whether salt would make a potato plant grow better and faster (it did), one that used water from washing dishes and bathing to see if it could be used for irrigation for plants (it could), and yet another that analyzed Earth soil vs. Mars soil and whether fertilizer mattered (it didn’t). The results from all three projects were used in the Destination Mars research.
Beside the biology of actually living and working on Mars, the students had to consider the logistics of transporting their materials, food and other supplies from Earth to outer space.
“We knew we couldn’t take cows to Mars,” Holland team member Norah Campbell said, hence their idea to potentially take animal cells instead.
Laura Harris, Holland’s gifted teacher and team leader, said all 11 of her team members worked after school and on holidays and weekends to perfect their entries, including the model pod complete with a cabinet of “meat cells” and a cardboard mock-up of an incubator and a fish tank.
“They all are stellar researchers,” Harris said. “They’re super creative.”
And what was the kids’ takeaway?
“Learning that you could live on Mars and learning to work together as a team was really fun,” Norah said. “Space is pretty awesome. Science is cool.”
