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Some Montauk School eighth-graders are helping NASA scientists in the search for life on Mars. Under the guidance of teacher Joe Malave, students in his earth science class have proposed to photograph from space sites on the red planet’s surface that might contain living bacteria. The proposal won them an invitation to NASA’s Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University.
About 60 teams of students around the country, ranging from fifth-graders to sophomores in college, have been invited by NASA to participate in the Mars Student Imagining Project, as the NASA-run program at ASU is known, with each group offering its proposals for Mars imaging jobs. But only a few win the right to give the Odyssey a photo assignment, as Mr. Malave’s class did.
When they visit the flight facility in May, the students will work with NASA scientists to use the Odyssey, a satellite with a thermal infrared camera system, to search for and photograph a region on Mars that they have theorized might have once contained glaciers, or may still have them underground. If the images they get back show evidence of glaciation, there is a chance that bacteria might be there, as bacteria also live on glaciers on Earth.
“There are no other students in the country doing what we’re doing,” Mr. Malave said. “And I could count on my two hands the number of scientists doing research on this.”
Since the beginning of the school year, Mr. Malave’s 13 students have been learning about Earth’s glaciers and weather and then translating that knowledge to Mars, to imagine where glaciers might have formed, based on that planet’s surface and atmosphere.
“The current theme of looking for life on Mars is called ‘follow the water,’” Mr. Malave said. Scientists have “discovered that there are a lot of land forms on Mars that are basically indicating that there is active or was past glaciation. Since, on Earth, bacteria live in glaciers, this project would follow NASA’s theme.”
“Right now there are thousands of images of Mars,” Mr. Malave said, “and you have to convince NASA why you need new images and how yours would advance science.”
Mr. Malave began using a NASA-designed curriculum in his classroom several years ago. The effort earned him and three East Hampton High School students a chance to work with scientists developing projects for the Space Shuttle program, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook four years ago.
Mr. Malave started working with the Mars Student Imaging Project a year ago; his class held monthly teleconferences with scientists at ASU to learn how to interpret images taken of Mars by the Odyssey’s sister craft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scientists also gave the class volumes of research about Mars that they could study, but the proposals for images that the class generated back then were too general.
Last spring, Mr. Malave was invited to the ASU facility to train for the image analysis and mapping that he is teaching this year. He also spent the whole summer thinking about a student driven project “that at the same time would try and funnel the students down into an area of research that I know NASA would like,” he said. Soon he started thinking about glaciers, and the students ran with the idea.
“I have a very good, motivated group of students,” Mr. Malave said. He started getting papers from them on “cold-based glaciers,” which have no layer of water between them and the land, and exist only in Earth’s dry Antarctic valleys. They realized that there are probably regions on Mars where cold-based glaciers also might exist, such as at the flanks of some of the planet’s tall volcanoes.
Mr. Malave’s class now has the challenge of raising enough money, between $7,500 and $9,500, to pay for their trip to Arizona in May. The Montauk School Board decided that the trip must be funded entirely through private donations and fund-raisers. Five parents will also have to pay their own way to accompany the kids as chaperones.
Mr. Malave has already made full plans for the field trip; when students are not navigating Mars with the Odyssey and its camera, they will visit the Barringer meteorite crater, the most perfectly preserved crater on Earth, and the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Both sites are Mars related, “in terms of topography,” Mr. Malave said.
Upon returning from Arizona, Mr. Malave said his goal is for the students to jointly write a science paper to publish in a scientific publication, the same way a graduate student might.
The class has planned a major fund-raiser, a family quiz night, for Saturday, March 7, at Montauk Downs State Park. The event is called “Are You Smarter Than an Eighth-Grader?” Tickets will go on sale through the school soon. Mr. Malave said he has also been applying for grants and collecting personal and private donations—including many from teachers. A planning committee has also been formed by parents.
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