Although this year has been quite different than others, due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has forced us to cancel all remaining Space Science Experiences from past March onwards, we are happy to present you a little recapitulation of this season, in which we will display a few statistics concerning this activities.

Over a 6- month span, starting in September 2019 until lockdown was implemented in March, 2,426 students and 139 teachers from a total of 42 schools visited us, completing a total of 57 sessions.

 

Participants in CESAR's lecture Room  Credit: ESA/CESAR

 

 

‘Mission to the moon’ in which students ages 7 to 9 learn about the difficulties of planning a successful mission to the Moon, as humans will do in the coming years, was the most demanded, with 25 activity requests. Completing the top three, we have ‘Mission to Mars II’ and ‘What are the stars made of?’  with 19 sessions held for each of them, being both intended for students ages 15-18. 

Historically, those activities are still far away in number of proposals from ‘Sun rotation’ (ages 12-13) one of the most demanded along the years - 90 requests so far- which this season has been solicited a total of 15 times.

In our ongoing commitment to offer a high-quality educational experience, at the end of the academic year we check our activities based on your feedback, and we develop new science cases for the upcoming season.

 

Participants in GALILEO room in ESAC     Credit: ESA/CESAR

 

For example ‘Mission to Mars I’ that we implemented this year as a part of the ESA’s Open Day activities has had a very good acceptance, being solicited a total of 12 times.

In this activity, students from 6th grade discuss from a scientific perspective, aided with ESA/NASA’s real data, what are the difficulties they would confront in the case they had to travel to Mars, such as how would they reach the red planet, where would they land, or where would they find the perfect place to establish.

‘The secrets of galaxies’ is another science case we offered this season for the first time, in which students ages 12-15 learn about galaxies by reproducing the works done by Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason, identifying from galaxies shapes and typologies their possible evolutionary paths.

 

 

For the first time, this year we implemented ESASKy as an educational tool in Space Science Experiences as ‘The invisible colours’ ‘The life of stars’ or the previously mentioned ‘The secrets of galaxies’ 

ESASky is a science driven discovery portal providing full access to the entire sky as observed with Space astronomy missions This activity was requested a total of 9 times this year.

 

 

Participants in ESAC entrance    Credit: ESA/CESAR

 

 

CESAR team is compromised with the use of STEM educative tools and this year we developed the experience “Constellations” using Stellarium and VR glasses, being happily accepted. 

COVID-19 has not stopped us, as CESAR Team is refurbishing the existing Space Science Experiences to allow students to live both versions we are currently offering in remote, until coming to ESAC is again possible.

And last, but not least, stay tuned for our new activities! whose names are ‘Plan your observing night’, ‘Receiving signals from the Sky’, ‘The Mars Seasons’ and ‘Calculate the Sun-Earth distance’ among others.

 

COVER CREDIT: ESA/CESAR