Students involved in the Centretown-based Ottawa-Carleton Educational Space Simulation program are preparing for blast off next February – and have already launched a fundraising and equipment drive to help give their interplanetary mission the feel of the real thing.
Each year, 50 students from Lisgar Collegiate and Canterbury High School take part in a simulated five-day mission to a planetary body where they learn the practical aspects of space exploration and have an opportunity to apply chemistry, physics and computer science to real life.
The simulated planet is built and housed at the Ottawa Technical High School, which serves as the mission’s launch site.
Although the program is supervised by Lisgar teacher Dr. Jim Magwood, the operations themselves are run by the students.
“The students do most of the planning, construction, training and preparation,” says Magwood.
“My job is to make sure they are well trained, safe, and have the best educational experience possible.”
The students must first secure funding to complete the mission.
“It’s rather expensive to construct the real world representation of simulation technologies,” says deputy education commander Nick Eglin. “Things like camera systems, speaker systems, communication lines, and the computer network are all almost entirely donated by members, or paid for out of the pocket of Dr. Magwood.”
This year the group plans to update and rewire the simulation’s computer network, which will require the purchase of several hundred dollars worth of conduit and fitting. The team also requires a large number of toggle and push-button switches and old keyboards to implement a new design for the astronauts’ control panels.
The program’s primary fundraising method is the sale of educational services to elementary and Grade 9 teachers. These services include planetarium presentations on basic astronomy and hands-on space science presentations, which bring in around $1,000 each year.
There are also a number of provincial grants available to student-run organizations group expects to tap. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board helps subsidize the program by providing a rent-free space at the Ottawa Technical High School.
The program also has the support of a number of local companies such as Linde, which provides the group with materials such as liquid nitrogen at a greatly reduced cost.
This year the program hopes to make its destination Gliese 51 g, a recently discovered and likely hospitable planet in the Gliese 581 planetary system. This would be the program’s first mission outside of Earth’s solar system.
“This is actually one of the first times that a mission destination has been controversial,” says education commander and Grade 12 student Samuel Baltz.
“At 21 light years away, a mission to the Gliese 581 star system would require a fundamental reworking of the way that the mission functions.”
Magwood notes the students will need to figure out how to get there quickly enough using the technology in the program’s simulated reality, as well as how to deal with a 42-year round-trip communications time lag.
“We will need to finalize our decision soon because a lot of planning and preparation needs to take place,” says Magwood.
The construction team will need enough time to determine how the extraterrestrial simulation site will look and how it will be built – all of which will be kept secret from the astronauts and team members working mission control in order to keep the six-day mission as authentic as possible.
“We are a pretty adaptable bunch,” Magwood says. “We can pull off an engaging and meaningful experience even if we do not manage to implement all of the systems that we would like.”