STUDENTS from Uralla Central School have taken part in a video conference with NASA administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden.
Uralla Central was the only school in NSW which had the privilege of joining the space veteran.
Only one other Australian school, Scottsdale in Tasmania, was linked to the Powerhouse Mars Yard and Major General Bolden.
Uralla Central students were chosen for the exclusive link because they were one of the Mars Lab pilot schools and will soon embark on exercises that involve driving a Mars Rover, which one NASA driver has described as being almost identical in handling.
“Our students will remotely drive the Rover from our lab here at the school,” teacher and Mars enthusiast Nicolette Hilton siad.
“They will also work in collaborative groups to design and complete a course to access specific evidence on the Mars ‘surface’.
“Their challenge will be to discover if the evidence supports the theory that there may have been once water, and thus life, on Mars,” she said.
Last year, Ms Hilton won a prestigious NSW Government Science and Engineering Award for Innovation in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
“It was for my maths and science programs that are based on Mars,” she said.
“I just love anything to do with Mars.”
