Future Fridays blast off with astrobiologist space challenge for Lower School

This half term will be kicking off our new Futures Fridays focus on digital literacy with an exciting return visit from the captivating Dr Michaela Musilova, an award winning astrobiologist and explorer. Her research has taken her from working with NASA, ESA and various observatories worldwide to leading expeditions in extreme environments, such as beyond the Arctic Circle and on the summits of the world’s tallest mountains. She was commander of more than 30 simulated space missions to the Moon and Mars, and brought her unique expertise to St Mary’s to set a challenge for the Lower School.

She introduced the ‘Mission to Mars’ challenge with an inspiring talk about her work with some of the world’s leading educational establishments, including Caltech, the University of Bristol and UCL, and how this journey led her to become a senior adviser in Mars exploration.  As part of our commitment to careers education, Lower School pupils also explored employability pathways into aerospace, aviation and space engineering. 

Pupils will work in teams over the course of the half term to propose a mission plan, including outlining their goals, team, landing site and equipment. They will present their plan via whatever medium they choose, and Dr Musilova will select the best three projects at the end of the unit of study. 

Current plans range from 3D models to simulated video reports from Mars. To further support their work, we will be visiting the School of Engineering at UWE in Bristol next week to catalyse our creative processes.

As always, if you have any questions about the Futures Fridays programme, please get in touch with me as the Project Lead: dcurran@stmaryscalne.org

Mr Dan Curran

Head of Futures Fridays