VIDEO: EdWatch: Massive Mars map has Christina students considering space exploration careers – WDEL 1150AM

A massive map of the surface of Mars takes up most of the floor inside the gym at Jennie E. Smith Elementary School in Brookside.

Advanced Academics teacher Julia Dooley attended the Honeywell Educator Space Academy last summer in an astronaut training facility in Huntsville, Alabama. Through that, she connected with the Buzz Aldrin ShareSpace Foundation to bring the giant Mars map to her school.

"My students, right now, are driving rovers on Mars, so they've had to calibrate their rovers and choose the speed and targets that they want to go and visit," said Dooley.

The map is 25'-by-25'--too large for any classroom--and Jennie E. Smith Elementary is one of just 50 schools in the country that received the map. It was rolled out on the floor for two weeks to inspire hands-on learning, but it's not just for science students. Students in every class at every grade level, kindergarten through 5th, are using the map, which itself is aimed at promoting space exploration through a variety of disciplines, including science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM).

"In music, they're investigating the physics of sound, so thinking about radio telescopes and how sound and science go together," explained Dooley. "In the library, they're creating landers that are going to be dropped on the surface....in art, they are creating Mars posters...encourage Mars travel."

The colorful, topographical vinyl map shows students the landscape and distant hot water flow patterns of Mars, and has gotten them excited about space exploration.

"I learned that Mars is a really big planet, and it's really far from Earth. If you see it, it looks like a dot--like a star--compared to the Moon cause the Moon is closer," said fifth grade student Amatullah Wilson."It just looks really different."

"That map is really big, and it's really cool...I thought it was going to be small for everyone to hold," said fifth grader Marcai Reed. "My Mars rover was made out of card stock, marshmallows...a paper cup and straws."

Reed and Wilson learned the hard way how difficult it can be to land on Mars.

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"I learned that I could've done it better like putting on the straws on the bottom so it could land all flat," he said.

"In real life, they might take someone to Mars, and in real life, you need to think about your plan because if one little thing goes wrong, and you land wrong, you don't know what's going to happen to that person," she said.

Reed was excited to learn that at some point there may have been some life on Mars--and that maybe life could exist there again.

"I would want to go to Mars, but right now, I wouldn't because we don't know a lot about it, and if I go on a spaceship, I wouldn't be able to get back because I don't have a lot of fuel, so I would try to go in the future."

But it's that future that Dooley wants her students to be thinking about as they consider future careers.

"This is the generation that will be going to Mars, it's anticipated in the next 15 years that people will step foot in Mars," she said. "So it's wonderful to think about any of these students being one of those people."

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VIDEO: EdWatch: Massive Mars map has Christina students considering space exploration careers - WDEL 1150AM