Mars: The New Age of Discovery

For this final unit of our STEAM Class this term, Frontiers, and the final unit of STEAM I'll have here at GCE, we dove into the Final Frontier itself; space. We learned about the abbreviated history of astrophysics, through reading Neil Degrasse Tyson's book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, and learned how to calculate a Riemann sum. 

For this Action Project, we were tasked with creating a scientific conference poster that discussed the current state of space exploration, through detailing one of the several Space Technology Grand Challenges set up by NASA. 

Below is my conference poster, detailing one of NASA's Grand Challenges, Colonization.

This Grand Challenge has us aiming to create self-sustaining and reliable human environments and habitats that enable the permanent colonization of space and other planetary surfaces. Currently, the infrastructure and integrated technologies needed to enable permanent, self-sufficient human settlements away from Earth do not exist. Effective closed loop systems do not exist to replenish consumable resources. This, in turn, makes longterm stays cost-prohibitive and poses significant risk to personnel if resupply missions do not arrive on time. The main goal for this Grand Challenge is to create or discover technologies that can make this permanent colonization of other planets possible. As of now, Mars is the main planetary body scientists are focusing on a colonization attempt for.


In conclusion, I thought that this final STEAM Action Project was a good one to close out the year and my time here at GCE with. It was fun, it was challenging, and it was memorable. Learning about space has always been some of the most fun I've had learning, since it's always fascinating to learn new things about it to me.



Sources:

    Levchenko, Igor, et al. “Mars Colonization: Beyond Getting There.” Global Challenges (Hoboken, NJ), John Wiley and Sons Inc., 25 Oct. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6383964/.

    “Mars & Beyond.” SpaceX, www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/.

    “Roadmap - The Mission.” Mars One, www.mars-one.com/mission/roadmap.

    Szocik, Konrad, et al. “Visions of a Martian Future.” Futures, Pergamon, 15 Jan. 2020,  www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328720300045. 

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