School No. 4 joins NASA’s Journey to Mars

With NASA finding proof of liquid water on Mars, and a movie about Mars playing in theaters, the timing couldn’t be better for School No. 4 to participate in NASA’s videoconference on its Journey to Mars mission, which aims to put humans on Mars in 2030. 

The videoconference took place at School No. 4 on Oct. 1. In preparation, students worked with sixth grade science teacher Susan Bruno to formulate questions about the mission. School No. 4 will be able to submit one question to the video conference and students hope their question will be the one selected for a response from NASA. The students had many questions and continued to approach Ms. Bruno even after dismissal.

The videoconference will feature NASA directors, an astronaut, a NASA botanist (to discuss how agriculture might be developed on Mars) and two actors from the movie “The Martian.”

Among their questions: How would they grow food on Mars with no soil? What happens if other countries get there first? Why are scientists interested in possibly colonizing Mars and not the moon? If we can’t grow anything in Mars’ soil, can we bring our own? How many people could we have live up there? 

The video on NASA’s Journey to Mars website: http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/?v=289--