Mars 4-H club gives farm show crowds taste of Martian life
Members of Mars Space Pioneers 4-H STEAM club gave Pennsylvania State Farm Show attendees a preview of both living on the Red Planet and the upcoming borough of Mars‘ Martian New Year’s celebration.
Mary Elizabeth Snow, the 4-H leader, said eight club members presented their answer to the NASA’s Mars Challenge over two days on the Lancaster Stage in the farm show’s main exhibition hall.
“The Mars Challenge asks what happens when NASA sends 100 people to live on Mars,” Snow said. Club members gave their answers in a one-hour presentation that included different facets of an existence on Mars.
“Snow said Sam Walowen and AJ Snow demonstrated the Rube Goldberg engineering they came up with to construct a miniature golf course on Mars.
“People are going to need entertainment. How are you going to put a putt-putt golf course on Mars?” asked Snow. “They made it into a Rube Goldberg solution. How are you going to give people ordinary things to do on Mars?”
Other club members tackled other challenges. Gabby Spuntak took on the question of how animals will get to the Red Planet and what their purpose will be, livestock or pets. Daisy Snow and Missy Drake discussed farming in our future on a planet covered in Iron dioxide. Rose Snow and Bailey Jackson tackled the subject of fashion and interior design and how it might affect future colonists’ moods.
Members spent six weeks researching their topics, preparing their presentations and getting their demonstrations ready.
Snow said their work really paid off.
“They did such an amazing job of capturing the attention of the audience and bringing them into the discussion,” she said. She added the Mars Space Pioneers 4-H STEAM Club’s presentation will be broadcast on the Pennsylvania Cable Network in the near future.
The club’s demonstrations were part of an effort to get word of NASA’s Mars Challenge out to third- through eighth-graders across the nation.
“They are trying to get the public educated, spread the knowledge, to have more join the competition,” she said.
The borough of Mars allowed club members to use one of its buildings to meet and store its materials in advance of the farm show trip. In turn, the club will take part in the borough’s annual Mars New Year Celebration.
The borough hosts an annual Mars New Year celebration, this year on June 9 and 10, and NASA participates in this two-day science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) event to inspire young people to pursue innovation and exploration.
Since the Martian year is 687 Earth days, planetary scientists have chosen the date when the sun crosses the equator on Mars as the start of a new year on Mars.
The community event began in 2015 in the borough. It's held roughly every 687 days to commemorate the Martian New Year.
