Bridgewater High School Constructing a Life on Mars (CALOM) project

Over two days in October 2020, 25 students from Bridgewater High School took place in a mixed online and classroom based Constructing a Life on Mars project. Due to COVID restrictions, it was not possible for the team from 4wardFutures to work with the students in school on the project. The project therefore involved Mark from 4wardFutures hosting three webinars with professionals from the space sector, which the students and staff joined from the classroom. In the first webinar, Ray Stott from Space Specialists gave the students an overview of the three current missions that are taking place to send satellites and rovers to Mars. In the second webinar, Arno den Toom joined the workshop from his home in Holland to talk about the challenges humans visiting Mars will face growing food on the planet – a critical challenge to be overcome if humans are planning to create sustainable settlements on Mars. In the final webinar, which was joined by over three hundred other students, Brad “Buddy” Gersey, a NASA funded scientist joined the students from his home in Texas, USA. In this webinar, Brad talked to the students about his research into how astronauts can protect themselves from the damaging effects of radiation when travelling in space. He then described his recent experiences of sending experiments up into space on the Blue Origin Young Sheppard rocket. In addition to the webinars, the students worked in teams to design and create a range of model Mars settlements, for their Life on Mars.