NASA Engineer Shares Historic Mars Experience

To prepare students for blastoff, Ms. McCandless gave some fast facts about the fourth rock from the sun. Mars’ rotation around the sun is almost double the length of Earth’s at 687 days long. While the average temperature of Earth is roughly 53 degrees Fahrenheit, Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Mars’ geology has two large structures: Olympus Mons, a volcano as large as Arizona and 2.5 times taller than Mt. Everest, and Valles Marineris, a canyon system that is 2500 miles long and 4 miles deep.  

 

Perseverance’s mission is the first one of its kind. McCandless explained that the rover has six wheels, a robotic arm and a mast. She said it carried the first helicopter, Ingenuity, to Mars. While Ingenuity conducts  flights, Perseverance has a busy to-do list including testing for breathable air, collecting surface samples that will later be brought back to Earth, exploring its landing location that has never been seen before (the Jezero Crater), and looking for evidence of past microbial life.

 

In a question-and-answer session with Ms. McCandless, lower school students asked great questions about her education, career goals, the future of space exploration and her perspective on being a woman in STEM.

 

When asked what happens if and when life is found on Mars, Ms. McCandless said that most of NASA would cheer and then get to work studying it and testing it. Students continued asking insightful questions such as when humans would set foot on Mars. The answer? Hopefully by the end of the 2030s. Several students asked about her career and what her academic journey was like to get her to NASA. Ms. McCandless graduated from Kansas University with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and completed her masters in the same subject. But her inspiration to study science and space started when she was five and the Hubble Telescope took a now famous image, The Pillars of Creation.

“I saw that image and looked at my mom and said I’m going to be an astronaut and study that,” she said. On being a woman in STEM, McCandless recommends finding mentors who will support you, offer advice and go to bat for you.

Upper school astronomy students also joined the live discussion and asked questions about the mechanics of the mission and about McCandless's advice for college and career preparation and paths. 

 

Ms. McCandless emphasized that the success of this Mars mission, and all NASA explorations, depends on individual scientists, mathematicians, engineers and even artists working together to brainstorm, solve problems, analyze data, create computer code, animate flight patterns and to document the process for history through film and storytelling — In short, STEAM skills.

Her final thoughts for budding astronomers and scientists: “With Perseverance and Ingenuity, you can reach your goals, and Mars.”