Swiss children pack for ‘Mission to Mars’

Leo puts on a shiny, silver suit and carefully places the helmet over his head before marching with the other budding astronauts to their spaceship.

“Going to Mars is really my dream,” the eight-year-old said, jumping excitedly from foot to foot.

As the world is captured by the escapades of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, a group of Swiss elementary school children eagerly prepare their own mission to the red planet.

Some of Switzerland’s leading astronauts, including the country’s sole astronaut, Claude Nicollier, have evaluated the detailed mission plan the children developed over nine months.

And on March 8, they made it clear for the removal.

The children ‘exploded with joy’ when they heard this, their teacher at the Vivalys private school near Lausanne, Sebastien Roussel, told AFP.

“It was like looking at the ecstatic reaction of NASA engineers when perseverance ran out.”

This week, they finally shot down.

Their rocket is actually a bus, with images of astronauts on a spaceship en route to a bright red sphere covering the windows, flanked by the message: “Mission Vivalys.

Space station

Their destination? A Mars space station is conveniently a bus ride away in a remote wooded area on the outskirts of Lausanne in western Switzerland.

Here, the 16 eight- and nine-year-olds will spend three days experimenting similar to some done by real astronauts, including growing plants to sustain them on the long journey.

And although the idyllic, snow-covered environment is far less hostile than the windswept, dusty surface of Mars, the children wear suits and helmets when they step outside.

Inside the base, with his helmet – actually a face-diving diving mask – under his arm, Leo says that this ‘analog mission to Mars’ made him all the more eager to see the real thing.

“But I do not want to land where Perseverance landed. It is radioactive there and very cold,” he said.

In an effort to simulate a true space mission, all children’s meals consist of freeze-dried space food.

The initial plans to sleep on the premises have meanwhile been scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our biggest concern is not to bring the virus to Mars,” Olivier Delamadeleine, head of the school’s Educalis group, told AFP.

The mission aligns with the school’s general approach aimed at deepening the pupils through the “real life experiences”, he said.

During the preparation months, the children took part in astronomy and rocket engineering workshops offered by students at the neighboring EPFL – one of the most prestigious technical universities in Europe.

A motivation to ‘win’

The mission required them to use mathematics to calculate the distance to Mars, and they also sharpened their language skills and learned how to spell the names of the planets.

Roussel said the mission is a victory for a teacher who wants to motivate his students.

The first experiment the team starts with after arriving at the space station is to send homemade paper rockets into space.

The children go to work rolling rolls of paper in tubes before adding pointed paper tips and fins.

Ewan, the designated leader of the project, recommends using a lot of tape.

“We’re going to pump air into them, so it’s important to close them tightly,” the young man explained.

He puts on his mask and helps secure the launch site with safety cones and adhesive tape.

When the other children get there, he helps Roussel place one rocket on a large metal structure attached to a pump.

As they turn a red lever against the valve, the paper rocket flies as high as the treetops amid wild applause.

Exploding rockets

After all the rockets are launched, the kids hold an outflow session with Jonas Morfin, known as ‘Jupiter Jonas’, at EPFL’s Space Innovation Unit.

In front of the camera, they are explained about the problems that a rocket ended up with, and he gives instructions on how to improve the structures for the next launch.

“Maybe strengthen the following with more band?” Morphine tells a girl whose rocket exploded in the air.

The preparation for the mission, and especially the Zoom conversation with Nicollier earlier this month, made some children dream of becoming astronauts themselves.

“That’s what I have in mind,” Leo said. “Now I want to be a scientist or astronaut.”

Perseverance’s images of Mars also make some children eager to see people walking on the red planet.

“It’s possible for robots,” said Nina, one of the two children named mission leaders.

“I think it will be possible for us soon.”

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© 2021 AFP