Just north of Pittsburgh, PA, there’s a small town called Mars. With tall pine trees, rolling green hills, and small lakes dotting the landscape, it would never be confused with its namesake planet, but each Martian year-roughly every two Earth years-the town throws a Mars New Year festival to celebrate the dusty, red world that shares its name. This year, the MAVEN team joined in on the fun.
Led by postdoctoral researcher and MAVEN team member Catherine Regan, a group of West Virgina University physics and astronomy students travelled to Mars, PA to talk with the public about MAVEN and its mission in understanding the evolution of the Martian atmosphere.
“It was incredible to see the turnout at this festival and really engage with people on why we study Mars,” said Regan.
Regan and her team handed out leaflets about MAVEN while talking about their research, and they also conducted demonstrations on magnetic fields and how they work on the Red Planet. Regan also gave a talk on the history of Mars exploration, its future, and MAVEN’s role in both. But the team’s most popular activity by far was their ‘make your own MAVEN’ station, where community members could create a paper version of the Martian spacecraft.
“Our goal was to inspire these kids to be future Martian scientists and to talk with their parents on why science is important,” said Regan.
Christopher Fowler, a research assistant professor in physics and astronomy at WVU, was very happy with how the event went.
“This type of outreach is critical,” said Fowler. “By letting the public know how important space science is, they will continue to engage with it and pass it along to the next generation.”
By Willow Reed, MAVEN Communications Lead