BOZEMAN – Around 80 middle schoolers are gathering at Montana State University this week to shoot for the moon.
And NASA is chipping in, making the entire Earth and Space Science camp free.
From the distance to the moon to what it takes to get a rocket with people on it there — space has always been a subject that interests kids.
We’re sure many of us still wonder what’s up there.
This week kids from across the entire state are getting to learn more…for no charge.
“I want to, like, go out into space and discover stuff,”
That’s something many of us wanted to do when we were Cash, Cadence and Jaynee’s age: fly to the moon.
“There’s so much to learn about space and we need to know more about the moon and stuff because we haven’t gone there for a lot of years,” says Cash Vaughn, a 12-year-old student from Libby.
With the help of MSU Academic Technology and Outreach, and, of course, NASA, that’s what around 80 kids are getting to do.
Whether it’s launching rockets piloted by “egg-onauts” to making sure they make it back to earth, no cracks, no worry.
“We got to fly drones and we got to control robots,” says Jaynee Cree Medicine, a 12-year-old student from Heart Butte.
Students from across the Treasure State, from Libby to Havre and beyond, got to shoot for infinity and beyond, a cool concept, especially when you are, say, 12-years-old.
“I’m not that into science but I figured I wanted to learn more,” says Cadence Kallenberger, a 12-year-old student from Havre.
Some students also participated in doing a lunar challenge to bring a replica of the Apollo here to a mock-up of the moon’s surface.
The importance?
Get a bird’s eye view of how NASA did all of this in the first place.
Classes ranged from studying germs in space to food and earth sciences, expanding the beyond our atmosphere to include even more students this year with about 40-percent of them being native.
“Everybody from across the state has come here for this opportunity,” says Richard White, NASA Explorer Space and Science Academy director at MSU.
…Something White says is one way to connect young minds to what lies in orbit.
“I feel like I want to be a science teacher,” Kallenberger says, a switch from how she felt before Space Camp.
The camp will run until Friday and it’s also cool because they are emphasizing this week being the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Reporting by Cody Boyer for MTN News
