The eighth grade students from Fox Meadow Middle School went on a mission to Mars! The simulated Voyage to Mars mission takes place in the year 2076 at the Challenger Learning Center of Colorado in Colorado Springs. The latest human crew enters Martian orbit, arriving from Earth on the Mars Transport Vehicle. The new crew is specially trained to perform scientific explorations while overcoming emergencies and environmental variables. This was the mission of teacher Matthew Allner's eighth grade science class.

The crew hadthree goals or measures of success. The first was to ensure a safe crew exchange. The second goal was to determine which of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos to send a pre-built probe. They also built a probe in-flight to send to the other moon. Their last goal was to monitor the rover 1 team that was doing geological research on Mars. As they accomplished these goals the crew faced many obstacles and emergencies that as a crew they problem-solved and corrected to have a successful mission.

When asked how she felt about the mission, Tianna Boone, a life support officer, said, "I think that this wonderful experience was something I would like to do again sometime. I felt like I was a real astronaut during the mission, as I felt the stress the astronaut's experience." Nick Brindopoke responded, "The mission control job was pretty hard because it was fast paced and intense, but it was fun at the same time."

The crew for the Voyage to Mars mission were from Fox Meadow Middle School in Harrison School District 2, the only NASA explorer school in Colorado and one of 175 NASA Explorer schools in the United States. The focus of the school's curriculum is space and technology and implementing NASA materials into their regular classroom activities. The crew's teacher, Matthew Allner, has applied to the astronaut program.

The Challenger Learning Center of Colorado (CLCC) - one of 51 Challenger Learning Centers in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. and the first in an eight-state radius - is a space-based learning environment where schoolchildren, families, senior citizens, corporate teams and other community members fly simulated space missions. The CLCC features a Mission Control Center modeled after the one at Johnson Space Center and an International Space Station simulator where experiments are performed and probes are "launched" into the depths of outer space. The CLCC currently offers three on-site mission simulations: Rendezvous with a Comet,Voyage to Mars and Return to the Moon. The three distance-delivered simulations (e-Missions) are Moon, Mars & Beyond (3-5 grade), Operation Montserrat (6-8 grade) and Space Station Alpha (9-12 grade). Younger "astronauts" have a blast during hands-on adventures designed for K - 3 students.

The Challenger Learning Center of Colorado also has a full offering of summer enrichment programs for ages 6 - 18. Please call the center for more information at 598-9755.