Education |

Future astronauts can take a virtual reality bus tour of Mars thanks to Lockheed Martin

The astronauts who will one day be the first to walk on Mars are likely middle school students today, so Lockheed Martin — the company building the spacecraft to get them there — is also working to build excitement among them.

With a virtual reality tour of Mars on a retrofitted school bus outside the Denver Museum of Nature and Science Saturday, that strategy seemed to be working.

“In the very near future someone will go to Mars,” an official told passengers in a video conference at the end of the five-minute ride. “Will it be you?”

Young children staring at the bus windows serving as the virtual reality screens looked on in awe as the bus seemed to drive through Mars passing a storm that enveloped the bus in a yellow-orange cloud as a computer alerted them to the danger of flying debris. At another point, the computer warned the temperature was dropping to -94 degrees Fahrenheit.

Still, at the end, kids responded to that final question by nodding their heads, and jumping to volunteer to go to Mars. One boy said he might also go to Pluto.

“I think it was really cool,” said 9-year-old Sara Strouse. “To see the houses and the temperature of what it’s really like on Mars.”

But it was also a little scary, she said, unsure if she would want to be the person to go to Mars one day.

The bus will be at the museum again Sunday. After that it will head to Colorado Springs and then start a tour across the country.

Heather Mckay, a propulsion engineer for Lockheed Martin who is working on the Orion spacecraft that will go to Mars, was excited Saturday to see the kids coming off the bus excited about Mars and space.

“One day they’ll be interviewing the first people to walk on Mars, and they’ll ask about how they got inspired and it could be something like this,” said Mckay, who grew up in Littleton.

Orion is planned to go on an exploration mission “to the far side of the moon” in 2018. It had a successful first experimental flight in 2014. The upcoming mission will test that NASA’s launch systems can send Orion farther “than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown,” according to an earlier NASA news release.

The kids who will grow up to make it onto the manned mission, expected in the 2030s, will have to endure a “punishing” nine month journey each way to the red planet, and will have to be protected from extreme temperatures and radiation.

Middle school students who think they have an idea of what astronauts may need from their “habitation module” while staying in Mars can also participate in a video challenge where a winning designer will earn $10,000. The habitation module needs to complement Orion as a place for astronauts to live and would be used for housing supplies and research labs.

The grand prize would also include a “space experience” that hasn’t yet been planned as officials said, it’s all a first.

“We’re making history,” Mckay said.