Last Wednesday something extraordinary happened at the Barnim High School in Berlin. This time the schedule contained something besides Mathematics, Physics and English – Rocket Science! Barnim High School has a strong focus on STEM and encourages students to expand their horizons.
With a team of three rocket scientists, two rovers, and our latest lander prototype, the Part-Time Scientists held a lesson on how to send a rover to the moon. Our lesson fit into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum, but one subject seems to have been left out: how to actually get started?
Robert, Michael, and Sven showed how it is possible to get your idea from ‘impossible’ past ‘extremely complex’ through ‘it might be doable’ all the way to ‘let's get it done!’ Sending a rover to the moon is an immensely complex undertaking and involves a lot of skilled people, resources, and partnerships.
Being among the youngest of our team members, Robert still has fresh memories of sitting in the back rows of classrooms listening to lectures on what other people already have done in the past. It's a law of nature that the younger generation has the urge to change and shape the world around us, and improve upon previous work. For that very reason we think it is important to encourage both young and old to believe in themselves and sometimes even try to overcome the impossibilities of a mission to the moon.
Thanks to the tireless work of our developer team, we've been able to demonstrate the capabilities of our latest rover generation through a simulated remote-controlled link. Most of the time people like to see things explode, but sometimes it's just as awesome to get things moving :-).
We received a lot of positive feedback afterwards and are quite grateful to have had this unique opportunity. Here are three selected responses we received in an abridged, translated, and anonymized form from students who participated in the workshop:
"The presentation of the Part-Time Scientists was quite interesting, and I learned a lot about what you need to think of to build something for the moon"
"Being a young woman, I was not very excited when I heard there is a talk about how to send a rover to the moon, but once I saw how many surprises and challenges a mission to the moon involves, it caught my interest.
I really like the project and wish the Part-Time Scientists all the best and that their hard work will end in success."
"My first impression was very positive even though I didn't know that much about what it takes to send something to the moon. I was quite impressed how much time and effort they invest and how they get things organized. I really wish the team the best of luck!"
A hearty Hell Yeah It's Rocket Science! to all of you!
