To the moon: Greetings and a message from young Iroquois earthlings – GoErie.com

NASA Animation: 'How We Are Going to the Moon'

An animated short produced by NASA details how the agency plans on returning to the moon by 2024 through its Artemis program.

NASA

The countdown is on.

A video starring Iroquois JuniorHigh School seventh-graders is goingto the moon this coming fall.

"We'll be on the moon forever. Maybe aliens one day in the future will see us and say, 'Look at this Ir-o-quois group,'" teacher Lindsey Bloomster said.

Bloomster's seventh-grade S.T.E.M. class made the video for NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024.

In preparation, NASA will hire private companies todeliver Artemis science and technology to the lunar surface over the next three years. The Iroquois video and videos from other school classes will be compiled and launched in the first quarter-million-mile, UPS-stylespace delivery in November.

The videos are part of NASA's Artemis Project Pledge, in which next-generation adults pledge to valuescience, technology, engineering and math, or S.T.E.M., education. Iroquois students spent the week before spring break researching the Artemis program andcreating their pledges, including "to prepare the Artemis generation to be (Iroquois) Brave explorers."

Students also produced and edited the video.

"The fun part about the project was putting it all together, saying our parts and seeing it come together," said Ben Moffett, 13.

More: SpaceX mission scheduled to blast off with Edinboro University grad

Bloomster and Iroquois Junior-Senior High Principal Douglas Wilson will join the students aboard this fall'smoon shot. Both have small speaking parts in the video.

Wilson originally declined Bloomster's invitation to be part of the project but later thought better of it, Bloomster said.

"He said, 'You know what? I want to be on the moon,' " she said.

And Wilson's contribution was ahit.

"We really liked seeing your principal speak so strongly about partnering with community," NASA's Moon to Mars Team saidin an emailed thank-youto the Iroquois class for its "AMAZING" video. "We are excited that you are joining the other pledgees in preparing the Artemis Generation to explore."

Artemis astronauts going to the moon in person for the first time in a half-century will include the first woman on the moon. The four-astronaut teamwill remain on the lunar surface for about a week. Subsequent Artemis teams will set up a base camp at the lunar South Pole.

Their mission: To explore, colonize and learn what they can on the moon.

Their next giant leap for mankind: Mars.

"I think going to the moon some day would be fun, and being an astronaut and seeing what they do," said Hunter Chew, 13. "I wouldn't want to go to Mars.That's too far away from Earth."

More: Q&A: Behrend planetarium director talks lunar landing

The students' class projects this year also included creating circuit games, building bridges and rubber-band racecars, and experimenting with computer-aided 3-D design.

"I like them to be able to do things and had been worried that, with COVID, we'd just have to do research all year," Bloomster said.

But the school was closed just twice, and briefly, due to COVID-19 cases.

The students last week built their own rockets, and the countdown to launch is on.

"It will be really fun to send them off and see how they go," Hunter said.

Astronauts last visited the moon almost 50 years ago, via Apollo 17 in 1972.The Artemis program is named for the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology.

More: From the archive: Erie reacts to man landing on the moon

Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@timesnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @ETNmyers.

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