Starbase: Mission to Mars

By Ann Klefstad

Thekids are going to settle Mars. Some are planning and building the rocket; some are working out the design of the rover for surface exploration. Some are thinking about life support, and how the explorers would stay alive on this new planet.

It’s all happening in a classroom at the Air Guard 148th Wing base in Duluth. The Starbase program, for fifth grade students, is a week-long immersion into the science needed to explore the universe.

Charity Johnson, director of the program, describes it as “showcasing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers at the age when kids might start to lose interest in science.”

The storyline of the 25-hour, five-day program — the Mars mission — is to grab kids’ imaginations, she said. “They work as scientists or engineers would in the real world,” Johnson said, “and the math and science they are doing is all wrapped up in the challenges of the activities. We see the spark of excitement with many students who might not have enjoyed those subjects before.

“Our mission is to grow that spark over the course of the week and truly show them how fulfilling and exciting a STEM career can actually be.”

Total Immersion in Tech

From the first moment the students walk in, they’re immersed in the story line. Instructors wear flight suits and have call signs — nicknames their crew knows them by, like “Maverick” or “Deuce” or “Ice Man.”

Students pick their own call signs too, and they run the gamut from favorite sports to pets: “Chipmunk,” “Stella,” “Artichoke” and “Sloth.” Kids get to become someone new on the base, to enable them to learn in ways they never have before.

Said “Maximum Ride” about the experience: “STARBASE changed the way I see STEM, as something we have used for as long as mankind has walked this earth. With STEM, we have made many ways to make life easy, to get a better understanding of life, or to see if we are not alone. Learning from our failures and successes with STEM is something we use every day.”

Students have the opportunity to explore STEM careers through videos and collectible cards.

Other kids see, for the first time, how this kind of work can open up interesting lives for them.

“Chicken Nugget” remarked: “I didn’t know what STEM was until I came to Starbase. It helped me learn that I could use it in a lot of jobs.”

Living inside the story, girls and boys are introduced as scientists and engineers who are developing a mission to Mars, and they each play a role in understanding it.

Johnson described some of their problem-solving.

“How are you going to land a pod on Mars, how can you slow it down so your people aren’t damaged?” she said.

In one scenario, they’re given an egg – the Eggsternaut — and a budget to buy materials. They have to work with the constraints of budget and physics to build their restraint system for the Eggsternaut. They try it, and then they get to redesign the restraint system, using the data from failure.

“That’s the engineering design process, trying things and learning from failure. We highlight that at Starbase,” Johnson said.

“We celebrate failure here.

Students often have a very different idea of failure, and we work to change that.”

Because you can’t learn how to do new things without it.

“I am more inspired to try doing harder things and keep trying until I get it done,” said “Stella.”

At the end of the week, the kids have successful solutions to the problems they’ve been given, and can test prototype rovers and rockets, landers and life systems.

Teachers bring their kids to the base, using five days of precious class time, so instructors are very conscious about helping students learn what they need to meet state standards for math and science.

Starbase is a program of the Department of Defense and the National Guard, as well as an educational nonprofit that delivers the program to area kids. All students in the regular school-year program are in fifth grade, as that is the age at which kids often drift away from science and math. All classes are delivered at the base, as the program incorporates robotics and technical equipment — which the Air Guard has in plenty.

Summer Program

A summer program also exists, which leads classes outdoors and incorporates more life sciences.

“The summer program is less Mars-driven. It has a general space theme and often incorporates lessons about, say, the experiments astronauts do on plants in the

Chemistry experiments provide students the opportunity to learn about the difference between physical and chemical changes.

International Space Station,” Johnson said.

This summer program enrolls students from the Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, and other community organizations — as well as from the general public. Children from organizations that partner with the program, such as Minnesota Power, LHB and Maurices, also participate in this part of the Starbase program.

Doubling the Space, Hoping for On-Site Education

A donation of $10,000 from Maurices, whose corporate offices are in Duluth, has helped enable the 148th to double the classrooms for Starbase, from two to four. In 2019, they served 1,500 students; they are hoping for more this year. Ground was broken for this project in November 2019, and the classrooms are ready for use this fall.

Students investigate coding and robotics using several different robots.

Johnson said the instructors and administrators of the program are proceeding with caution, but will incorporate rigorous safety measures to ensure the program can be run safely during the coronavirus.

“We hope we will be able to deliver our program on-site,” she said. “Following CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and state guidelines, and partnering with the public health and environmental safety divisions on base, we will deliver the program with all the appropriate safeguards in place, including staff and student health monitoring, personal protective equipment, social distancing measures and enhanced sanitization practices.”

They are waiting for decisions about the possibility for on-site schooling to be made by the state later this summer. D

Students engineer Mars landers as part of a challenge to understand the concept of inertia and land safely on the surface of Mars.

Lego EV3 robots give students practice with coding, navigation, and graphing on the surface of Mars.