Mission to Mars

PAY IT FORWARD: Today I had an opportunity to share a bit about my Tweetup of the Mars Curiosity Rover launch adventure with a group of 5 to 8 year-olds during CJ and Annabelle's K-3 science class.

I wish I had a camera with me to capture the look on the kids' faces. :)  I had them at, "Did you know RIGHT NOW, even as we sit here in this classroom, there is a rocket headed to MARS?! And inside it is a roving science laboratory the size of your family's car!"


I shared with them that this weekend NASA experts told me that someone their age now will be the first astronaut to reach Mars. Boy, did that get them going. Some kids immediately jumped at the idea, while others declared they'd rather not be on that mission. I reminded those kiddos that the astronauts were going to need top flight ground support in order to make it.

We counted out the months on the calendar that it will be before Curiosity reaches Mars (Aug. 2012). I'm hoping this resonates with some of them and come August, they think to wonder and ask what's up with the Martian probe.

I also reminded them that the ISS circles the globe constantly, as it has done for the past 11 years - their entire lifetimes! To be honest, it was a bit depressing to me how little they knew about the space program, but it was completely heartening to see how enthusiastic they were once someone took just five minutes to tell them about some of the cool stuff going on.

TO THE TEST: Today, the kids had their end of unit test in science.  The topic was fabric/textiles, and Bee scored 12/12, while CJ was 11/12. (He said you can assess a fabric's texture by looking at it, which is partially true, I suppose, but the more correct answer was by feeling it.)

TWEETACULAR:  Veronia McGregor of NASA posted a post Tweetup update to a Facebook Group for Mars Science Laboratory. She wrote, "How much impact did you have during launch week? Tweets about the launch and mission -- counting only those that included the #NASATweetup hashtag -- generated 65 million potential impressions! Consider an 'impression' to be a message that went out -- it's not the number of people receiving since individuals may receive more than one message. Don't know if anyone noticed but on launch day even @YouTube (7 million followers) was using the #NASATweetup hashtag.
You guys rock!! Thanks for helping us spread the message about the awesomeness the @MarsCuriosity mission and NASA. And if you think that's great, the launch overall (counting #nasatweetup + everyone else tweeting) had about 125 million potential impressions. But the Tweetup made up the majority! Pretty sure that's a first."

Go, us!

Speaking of 'us, here's a photo I took of 'our' rocket, an Atlas V with good ol' Curiosity strapped atop in a protective shell! The day before launch, we were able to get so close, I might have been able to hit it by tossing a rock its way. I decided not to try my luck, however, given the guys with guns on site.

AND BY THE WAY: I had a meeting last night with a woman working on a story about urban homeschoolers for Newsweek magazine. It was interesting talking to her about the research process of her story and how she is trying to quantify the number of urban homeschoolers out there statistically. It sounds like it's a bit like trying to herd chickens. No one organization out there accurately tracks the number of homeschoolers, so it's kind of hard to do anything beyond estimating.

We talked about the broad spectrum of homeschooling styles (from hardcore unschooling to married to a rigorous curriculum types and everyone in between). It will be interesting to read her story when it comes out.