Science 360 participants go on a Mission to Mars

A crowd that included a restless 7-year-old and a Peter Gallagher look-a-like went on a mission to Mars on Thursday.

The mission led the first half of the Science 360 program Mission to Mars.

The mission was piloted by junior Pete Mills, an Asian studies and English double major.

“Science is just a hobby for me,” Mills said. “I was working for the planetarium’s after-school program, and Science 360 just sounded really cool.”

Science 360 is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Casey Rawson, a UNC graduate student working with Science 360, said the program tries to reach out to the general public.

“We try to get science to those who wouldn’t get it otherwise,” she said. “Most people don’t go home and read scientific journals just for fun.”

Mills invited the audience to participate in the mock mission.

Participants voted on key decisions, such as where to land and what sights to analyze.

Together, they successfully landed a pod and discovered a thick layer of permafrost beneath Mars’s dusty surface.
Mission complete.

After the mission, senior Zena Cardman, who has traveled the world in the name of science, spoke about her experiences in astrobiology — a field in which researchers use unusual places on Earth to study other planets.

“I was pretty shameless,” she admitted. “I sent out about 83 e-mails to people within NASA. I just kept pestering them until I finally got a maybe.”

In the summer of 2008, Cardman traveled to Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadain High Arctic to film part of an episode for PBS series NOVA. The episode investigated whether or not there is, or was, life on Mars.

She said the climate of Mars and the climate of the Earth’s poles overlap.

Thus, she concluded, life could easily have existed on Mars if it can thrive in Earth’s arctic ice.

Following her graduation this December, Cardman will travel to Antarctica to research bacteria living in the frozen waters.
It’s as close as she can get to Mars—for now.