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Students in the Frank Spurlock Summer Science Camp in Berea ask questions of NASA's chief scientist Dr. Ellen Stofan via Skype.
(Linda Kramer)
Dr. Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist, talks via Skype to elementary school children at the science camp.
BEREA, Ohio - When you want to know the latest about Mars exploration or worm holes, the best person to ask would be Dr. Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for NASA.
That's what 40 campers at the Frank Spurlock Summer Science Camp did this week.
The kids, in the first through fifth grades, prepared their questions ahead of time with help from camp instructors Heather Deblock, Lydia Beard and Angela Yeager. Then the Rev. Leroy McCreary of the North End Foundation, which sponsors the camp each year, hooked the kids up with Stofan via Skype.
The questions ranged from animals in space to astronauts to Pluto. Jacob Roueihaeb, 9, wanted to know about worm holes. Stofan explained that worm holes exist in theory but no one has ever seen one. "They exist mathematically," Stofan said. "We have to do more work to fully understand them."
"There is so much about space we don't know," she told the kids.
Jacob said he's looking at becoming a scientist himself specializing in robotics. No astronaut training for him, however. "I want to work on things that will help astronauts," he said.
Stofan's appearance was arranged by Dr. Ed White, a friend of the Stofan family and a trustee of the North End Foundation. Stofan's father, Andrew, was director of NASA Glenn in the 1990s and her mother, Barbara, was a science teacher with the Olmsted Falls Schools. Ellen Stofan graduated from Strongsville High School and went on to earn a Ph.D. in planetary geology from Brown University. She's been chief scientist for NASA for the past three years.
She updated the students on the latest NASA projects, such as Juno, a spacecraft that will enter Jupiter's orbit next week. "We've had probes fly past Jupiter but Juno will go into orbit and study the planet," Stofan told the kids. Jupiter is made up of gases and one intriguing location is that huge red spot that has become the planet's signature. "We think it's like a very large hurricane," Stofan said. "Can you imagine a hurricane that big that goes on forever?"
NASA studies more than space, she said. "We study the Earth, too, because it's a very complicated planet and it's changing," she said. "NASA is trying to figure out why the changes." NASA also studies human anatomy and physiology. How does the lack of gravity affect astronauts is one question scientists are investigating, she said.
Mars is the next big goal in space. It takes eight months to get to Mars and another eight months back to Earth. "How do we keep those astronauts healthy?" Stofan asked. By the end of the 2030s, they hope to have the answers because that's when NASA plans to launch a crew to Mars.
"Your generation is the Mars generation," she told the campers.
Stofan spent about 30 minutes interacting with the students from her home in Washington, D.C. White said she was on vacation that day and was excited about meeting the campers and talking about science. Stofan said she spends time meeting with some high level government officials. One recent meeting was with Vice President Joe Biden about ways NASA can help with research into cancer. Spending time with children was a nice change of pace.
The science camp, which meets at People's Community Church on North Rocky River Drive, is named for NASA scientist Frank Spurlock, who died in 2014. Spurlock was a colleague and good friend of Pastor McCreary, who is a retired NASA human resource manager.
For Ava Batson, 9, a fourth-grader at Grindstone Elementary School, the visit with Stofan was "OK," but Ava was more interested in the science camp's theme this year - bugs. "Yesterday, we got to touch meal worms," she said. She was looking forward to a field trip to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
Pastor McCreary said he was impressed with the interesting questions posed by the students and with the journals the instructors had the students keep. On display in the classroom are cockroaches and a cicada.
The three camp instructors all have science connections. Deblock is a science and math teacher in Shaker Heights. Beard teaches at Tri-C and does colon cancer research at Case Western Reserve University. Yeager is at the Great Lakes Science Center.
The one-week camp is open to elementary school students from Berea and surrounding communities.