Engineers from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Space Agency (ESA) met Futures’ year 10 students remotely as part of their Core Project ‘applying for a job on Mars’.
The students found out about conditions on Mars and the challenges of instructing spacecraft and landers from millions of miles away. Simon Wood (ESA mission controller) and Luke Lucas ( Mars Express Spacecraft Operations Engineer) gave details of some of their work. The students took notes and asked some excellent questions. Henry asked the engineers whether they thought there were alien life forms and Harry asked how the pandemic was affecting their work.
The students will go on now to research the types of jobs that will be available on Mars and put together their own CVs . They will be the generation that could go to Mars, but we will look at more Earthbound work experience too.
Henry L and Adalyn were inspired to get the school telescope working as Tritam Edwards from EUMETSAT had offered to help with using the telescope. The year 10 students used Core Project time and their break and lunch and by the end of the day had the operation manual downloaded, the phone app installed and had worked out how to operate the telescope. We are looking forward to making observations as soon as possible.