Mars New Year evolves
What started as a way to ring in the new millennium using a name as a springboard, after 15 years became a way to highlight not just the borough of Mars but also its celestial namesake.
As the year 1999 drew to a close, and 2000 approached, John Koenig thought there should be New Year's celebration that was centered on families.
“It's all about making memories for the kids,” he said. “It's an event geared toward families.”
The first year drew more than 1,700 people to town, Koening said in a Butler Eagle article from December 2002.
There's no prize for guessing that the celebration was space-themed, given the 1-and-a-half ton spaceship sculpture in town. In fact, the spaceship featured prominently from the earliest days.
In 2000 and 2001, a 25-pound replica of the spaceship was lowered from a fire truck ladder until it rested on the larger spacecraft at midnight.
The festive lights that adorned the larger spacecraft were lit as the sound of noisemakers and cheers filled the air.
In 2002, partygoers were told an elaborate story about an attempt to lower the larger spaceship itself at midnight.
According to an article previewing the 2003 event, the crowd of 500 heard a crash and were told the spaceship had “veered off course” and landed on the roof of a car.
The car was then driven to the party where two small aliens, actually Koenig's daughters in disguise, emerged from the craft.
In 2008, the spaceship was brought in on a tow truck as a way of making fun of high gas prices. The fictitious “Joe's Peddle Car and Space Ship Recovery” truck landed on a large lit up star in the middle of a grassy area where people were mingling.
But over time, participation in the event waned. In 2015, citing the drop in attendance and unpredictable weather, the event was canceled.
Mars Mayor Gregg Hartung had the idea that something else could take the place of the New Year's celebration, and he pitched it to the Mars Historical Society, which had sponsored the New Year event.
“I said, 'Did you ever consider when new years would be on the planet Mars?'” he recalled in a January 2015 Eagle article.
When the society members expressed interest in the idea, Hartung got going.
He called NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to see when the new year would be on the red planet.
“I said 'Hey, this is the mayor of Mars,' and they said 'Yeah, right,'” recalled Hartung, who is retired as the director of the Presbyterian Media Mission on Pittsburgh's North Side.
After explaining that there really is a borough named Mars, the official remembered that he had seen a sign for Mars on Interstate 79 while at a conference in Clarion.
It turned out that Mars has its New Year every 687 days, and the next time it would be was June 18 and 19, 2015. The timing was perfect and before long, the event had taken on a life of its own.
Hartung reached out to NASA's public engagement team about the event and they came on board as well.
“NASA’s involvement is such an honor and an integral part of what we’re trying to accomplish. We want our students and community to be inspired by the possibilities of space,” said Missy Gralish, communications chairwoman, in an Eagle article about the 2017 event. “The Mars New Year Celebration brings two planets together as we celebrate the new frontier of planet Mars right in the heart of Butler County.”
NASA's involvement included sending more than a dozen scientists and engineers to the event to talk to students.
April Lanotte, a Mars native who works on aeronautics with NASA in Colorado, gave a demonstration of what would happen to a marshmallow Peep and a bottle of water in a vacuum.
Without air pressure, the marshmallow became swollen, while the water boiled. Lanotte said NASA likes to do educational outreach in small towns so people know what kind of work the agency is doing and how it might help people on Earth.
“People don't often see NASA as something they are a part of. They see it as some random distant thing,” she said.
The event has shifted again, moving from a strict observance of the New Year on the red planet to a space- and science-themed celebration held every two years. Work has already begun to plan the next one, set for June 2025.
“The committee is planning on the end of the school year, June 6 and 7, that we’ll have our celebration downtown of the planet Mars,” Hartung said.
The plan is to include many of the successful events and vendors from past events while also adding in new people.
“The committee is doing a really good job about taking it up a notch,” Hartung said.
Next year’s Mars New Year celebration — next Earth Year, at least — will feature drones, robotics, hands-on demonstrations and a science show where middle school students create things to help with the colonization of Mars. That will be judged by scientists and engineers from NASA.
“The NASA judges love it,” Hartung said.
Previous reporting by Eagle Community editor Paula Grubbs and Eagle copy desk chief Joe Genco contributed to this report.
