Published: December 5, 2014
Mr. Donelson issued a press release about events being held by him at his school:
Project Vesta to be held December 8th and 9th, 2014
For the 23nd year in a row, Gahanna’s Space Technology classes will be conducting all-day, high fidelity space simulations in the Clark Hall facility. Since the 1991-92 school year, science students have been demonstrating what they have learned about astronomy and robotics in simulations. For the first 20 missions, they conducted Project Orion, a shuttle flight simulation. In 2002, they began Project Cygnus, and in the following years conducted 10 missions that simulated landing on various sites on Mars. They have the longest continuous stretch of simulations of any high school in the world.
Marking the 23nd anniversary, this year’s mission explores mining minerals on the asteroid Vesta, which has been photographed and studied by NASA. Teams will use “bounce technology” to land a rover on the simulated space body, then use a student designed and tested rover to construct a structure, remove debris, and mine sample minerals from the asteroid’s surface. Each team also has a public relations team who will give tours and will be streaming video and posting pictures and information about the mission throughout the day.
Team Interstellar and Team The Underdogs
The missions run each day from approximately 8 AM to 3:00 PM, and guests are welcome to stop by for tours. We will also be streaming live video programs as well as student produced videos from Mission Control both days, beginning at approximately 7:45 AM.