Kids take simulated Mars space trip

A group of 20 kids met last month shortly after the crew of the shuttle Discovery returned safely from 10 days in space. The kids were ready to take part in a simulated trip to the planet Mars.

The Challenger Learning Center in north St. Louis County was the site of the simulated space trip. The center was established in honor of the Challenger shuttle crew that was lost when their space rocket exploded on takeoff in 1986.

The kids' simulated trip last month was set in the year 2076. Their Mars transporter vehicle was nuclear-powered.

The kids were divided into two teams. One group was supposed to be replacing the other team that had been living on Mars for over a year.

Of course, all this was make-believe. But, the mission control desks were real. And the tasks assigned to each team member were those of a real space voyage.

Thirteen-year-old Alex Creely of Chesterfield was his team's navigation desk operator.

Alex Creely (left) and Kevin Creely

His 12-year-old brother, Kevin, manned the remote desk for the other team. The remote operator uses robot arms and special vacuum chambers to test space samples.

Thirteen-year-old Walter Fu of Sunset Hills was on the life-support desk. It was his job to make sure the oxygen and water used by the astronauts was pure.

Sixteen-year-old Callie Jayne was on the communications desk. She was the switchboard operator who made sure the messages between the mission control and the mobile transporter crew got to the right place.

Walter Fu

During the trip to and from Mars, the teams also were charged with launching probes to Mars' two moons, Deimos and Phobos.

All of this simulation was accompanied by video of the surface of Mars. The scenes of the landing of the transporter on Mars were very dramatic.

Alex Creely said he watched the landing of the shuttle Discovery on TV before going to the Challenger Learning Center.

"I liked the computer simulation that described the return of Discovery to Earth. And we got to see the actual landing with night-vision cameras," he said.

The landing of shuttle Discovery had a lot of suspense. That's because two years previously, the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry, killing all the crew. Some of the shuttle's heat-absorbing tiles had been damaged on lift-off and weren't there to protect the shuttle from the 3,000-degree heat of re-entry.

The kids simulated trip to Mars included one scripted "emergency." Just as the second crew was getting ready to return to Earth, a siren went off, indicating a possible radiation leak in one of the two nuclear engines.

All the members of both crews had to be tested to see if they had been contaminated. The Isolation desk was in charge of the radiation testing.

Callie Jayne with simulation leader, Pam Nazzoli

Simulation leader Pam Nazzoli told the kids that if one of the engines had been disabled, it could have delayed the return from Mars to Earth. She said, with two engines, the return trip would take six months.

If only one engine were working, the return trip would have taken nine months.

The whole simulated trip to Mars and back involved several stages.

First, there was the blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The kids got a video view as if they were inside the space capsule.

Then, the kids docked with a Mars transporter vehicle, already in orbit around the earth.

The transporter used the nuclear engines to make the long trip to Mars. There, the transporter went into orbit to find a place to land safely on the Red Planet.

On the way down, they launched a space probe to the small moon, Deimos.

Then, they landed near the all-weather space base on Mars. While there, the crews made another space probe which the transporter crew launched to the larger moon, Phobos, just before leaving for Earth.

The whole workshop closed with first team leader Pam Nazzoli calling to the resident crew on Mars, "We'll see you in two years."

The Challenger Learning Center is open to the public. The center has good displays that show St. Louis area connections to the nation's space program. (For those local connections, see sidebar below.)

If you'd like to know more, go to www.clcstlouis.org or call (314) 521-6205.