United Space School On the afternoon of July 16th 2016, I, Dom Barry and Ekta Bagga from NPGHS, boarded a 777-200 bound for Houston, Texas. We were on our way to an “out of this world” experience at United Space School 2016. Over the next two weeks, I would work with fifty other students from around the globe, in achieving one goal: Planning a hypothetical mission to Mars. This adventure would be life changing, completely altering what I would want to do after leaving school. It is a great programme. The heat was the first thing that hit us as soon as we left the plane. It averaged forty degrees Celsius over the two weeks. It was hot! The time difference of eighteen hours was also difficult to deal with initially. After arriving, we were all assigned a host family. I was lucky enough to be hosted by one of the directors of the programme, Criss Butler. I also had two roommates: Danill from Russia, and Federico from Italy. It was really interesting learning about their cultures and trying to understand their version of English. On the first day of the programme, we were interviewed to see which team we would be put into, with each team focussing on a different aspect of the mission. I was assigned to Gold Team – Mission Control, with the team appointing me the leader, or “Flight Director” as I would become known. The other teams were as follows: Green – Biology and Habitat on Mars; Blue – Mars Exploration; Red – Mars transit; Maroon –Descending from Mars Orbit to Mars’s surface. We also had the challenge of trying to get to know fifty people in only an hour or so. By the end of the camp though, I had met extraordinary people from around the globe and made lifelong friendships. Over the next two weeks, we would have a school day that started at 7:30am with an introduction and schedule for the day, followed by two guest speakers until lunch at about 12pm. At 1pm we were back listening to another two guest
speakers until about 4pm. That happened most weekdays. The speakers ranged from astronauts to NASA engineers, lawyers, biologists, geologists – even an astronaut trainer. We even spoke to an astronaut in the International Space Station live! Every second day we had a field trip of some sort. This varied from going to NASA’s astronaut training facility, to Rocket Park to see the Saturn V and an Apollo capsule. All these talks and field trips gave us the knowledge to successfully plan a mission to Mars. It wasn’t all work and research thankfully. We also went to a football (soccer) game and got to unveil the American Flag on international television before watching the match. We went to a baseball game where the Houston Astros unfortunately lost 7-0 against a strong New York Yankees side. We also played a game of football (soccer) against the host parents and some NASA staff which I ended up refereeing. (The scores were tied at 6-6.) There was a culture fair where we had to bake a dish and perform something from our home country. I did the school Haka and baked Lolly cake which, although not iconic, is actually a delicious Kiwi invention. Every second evening and in the weekends we had host family time where we went paintballing, mini-putting, rollercoaster riding – the list goes on. On one occasion when I was with another host family on a speed boat, we almost got arrested – but that’s another story.
On the final day we presented out mission to the “Dragon’s den”, which comprised of some NASA staff, lecturers and engineers. These guys pulled apart our presentations right down to the tiniest detail; however they said that we had planned the best mission they’d seen over the last few years. We all graduated (thankfully!), with Ekta and myself both receiving one of five Texas flags for displaying leadership within our team. The United Space School was an amazing, life-changing programme that NPBHS and NPGHS are extremely lucky to be able to offer. You meet wonderful people and make incredible friendships. I encourage anyone who is interested in space or the sciences to take this opportunity and make the most of it. Dom Barry, Year 12
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