Mars project is out of this world | Orlando | thefloridacatholic.org – Florida Catholic

All Souls Catholic School students are all smiles behind their masks as they await the start of judging of the Mars Colony Challenge, a project-based STEM competition to create a colony on Mars that would allow people to not only survive, but thrive.

SANFORD | As our nations attention focused on Mars with the recent landing of NASAs Perseverance Rover, a group of All Souls Catholic School students recently brought the Red Planet closer to home with a Mars Colony Challenge.

Deemed the ultimate project-based STEM competition, the Mars Colony Challenge was the culmination of a four-month assignment that challenged four middle school teams Mega, Alpha, Rhos and Sigma (MARS) to work together to build a colony model that would not only allow its inhabitants to survive, but also thrive, on Mars.

The assignment was part of the schools newly implemented Applied Math and Science class, an invitation-only extracurricular class taught by Kim Craft, a professor at Full Sail University in Orlando. Twelve students were tasked to design a Mars-base camp habitation module that would provide necessities like water, food, oxygen, and power in a comfortable environment for the three-year roundtrip it would take to get to Mars. They had to also take in account the peoples physical, mental and spiritual well-being, all on a $1 billion budget.

Craft said the idea of the colonization of Mars is not an out of this world idea. Scientists have talked about it for years.

Life on Mars was something to galvanize the students around because it is such a timely topic, she said. This project allowed students to study astronomy, physics, even budgets on Excel spreadsheets. They got a chance to see the cutting edge of technology- everything from robotics, to artificial intelligence, and machinery in preparation for this project.

The project also provokes reflection on Gods creation, leading to a deeper appreciation of its mystery. The beauty and mystery of creation generate in the heart of man the first movement that stirs prayer, Pope Francis said at a General Audience in Rome one year ago. Man in prayer contemplates the mystery of existence around him, he sees the starry sky that towers over him and that astrophysics shows us today in all of its immensity and wonders what the design of love must be behind such a wonderful work!

I really enjoyed the hands-on research, said Luis, a seventh grader who aspires to be a structural or mechanical engineer. I was testing our chemical compositions before the competition was finalized.

The students presented their work to a panel of judges, professionals in the fields of engineering and imagineering, who scored their work in several categories. Judges Bill Robinson, a former engineer/imagineer at Walt Disney Imaginary Worldwide; Paul Vogt, senior director of Product Line Management at Seagate; and Scott Von de Houten, a distinguished engineer and architect at CISCO Systems, said the quality of the students work made it difficult in selecting a winner, but in the end, they gave first-place honors to Team Sigma.

All of the projects were very well done and high caliber, Robinson said. The kids knew their stuff.

I think they did a great job, especially considering we have the pandemic going on, Craft said. Despite some difficulties early on, the students maintained their enthusiasm and their persistence. It really is an unbelievable accomplishment, not only that they put together and assimilated the technical information, but also turned this into almost a theatrical production.

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Mars project is out of this world | Orlando | thefloridacatholic.org - Florida Catholic