Antariksha| Putting the 'Art' in Artemis
Putting the 'Art' in Artemis
Humans ready to go to Mars
Summary
Till date, rovers, spacecrafts have been sent to Mars from earth. Some are and will be exact replica of humans, but humans have still not landed on Mars and explored the beginnings of new life.
How I Addressed This Challenge
My daughter, Vaidehi Joshi is a kindergartner. She created a rocket with 2 astronauts in it, ready to go to Mars.
The rocket will be capable of taking humans from Earth to Mars. She thinks, it will have a bathroom for brushing, bathing, toilet; a kitchen for making and eating food; a bed, blanket and pillow for sleeping and an ipad to chat with teacher, books, pencil, crayons for studying and drawing. This will help astronauts feel like home in the spacecraft.
As the astronauts will be away from their home for long time, she thinks the spacecraft should be designed in such a way that they can enjoy staying and feel like second home.
How I Developed This Project
Drawing and coloring is a way of expressing things what we imagine, believe and will be a good starting point to solving problems. As Vaidehi is a kindergartner, we chose Art as the challenge for her.
The challenge provided background of the expedition by humans to moon. We went through the NASA space agency data which had lots of videos, images of Apollo missions of sending monkey, humans to moon. She got very curious on how the life inside a spacecraft is, how everything floats due to no gravity including astronauts, food, water. Then we also watched Mars expedition videos and images. The “Curiosity” rover images of Mars astonished her, in one of which there was an existence of water body and now it is evaporated. The Rover animation video made her wonder why so many spacecraft parts get detached, how the camera sends photos to earth, what is a sample, why is it taken and think all the soil, rocks, mountains look like on Earth.
She had learnt in her Pre-school about rockets and we showed her the picture if Rocket take-off that she used in her project to draw a rocket with humans ready to go to Mars.
Problems we came with was in thinking what a kindergartner can Create, what data points we should use for her, how to explain some complex things as simply to a kindergartner that will help in understanding the basic crux of the challenge.
Achievements for us is the experience that Vaidehi has got with this challenge. She being a kindergartner is now aware of some space problems, how things work, how things behave in space and create an atmosphere of thinking, generate ideas and solve problems from the perspective of a kid.
How I Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used the attached NASA image of Rocket taking off into space.
This is the first step to go to Mars, that’s why Vaidehi wanted to take reference of this photo for her project.
Project Demo
My kindergartner daughter, Vaidehi created a drawing of Rocket taking off to go to Mars, which will take humans for the first time.
The rocket has a red nose and yellow body for distinguishing and looking nice. The darker shade in the interior of the rocket has all the necessary features for humans to survive inside and filled with oxygen. They are wearing white suits and helmets of astronauts. The Rocket has started to take off with red colored fire ignited below.
Data & Resources
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010100/a010194/MAVEN_Launch_screenshot_2.png
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10194
https://archive.org/details/msl20110624b-1280-i