OAK RIDGE YOUTHS WIN SCIENCE HONOR

OAK RIDGE -- A four-member team of Oak Ridge High School students has planned an internationally funded science station on the planet Mars.

Their proposal won top honors for the state in "Destination: Mars," a space education project sponsored by the National Science Teachers Association and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Team members are Jenny Eisenhauer, Jeff Mangels, Katina Sowell and Karen Wharton, all seniors at Oak Ridge.

Their proposal has been submitted to the national competition. The winning team nationally will receive a weeklong trip to Washington, D.C., for the National Space Science Symposium.

Their science teacher, Melody Green, explained that the students worked as a team to write a proposal for establishing a colony on Mars.

Students had to address societal issues, logistics, engineering and science.

Green said the proposals had to be realistic. "It was to be something they thought was possible," she explained. "And they had to support it with written research and background information from published materials.

"They had to consider how they would get the materials to Mars, how they would build and maintain a colony, the government, who would pay for it, and what the colony would study."

The students proposed that each country on Earth contribute to the project. All the major scientists would work together and the project would be funded as an international project.

They proposed that a lunar base be established and modules bound for Mars be launched from that lunar base, and then assembled in orbit around the planet. The assembled science station would then land on the planet surface.

Once the colony was established, scientists could study the effects of a different atmosphere on plants and animals, the planet's minerals and surface, and the atmosphere itself, the students proposed.

Green said the project forced students to use information they had learned in all the different areas of science. "It ties together physical science, chemistry, biology and physics."

And she said, the contest timing was good because students were finishing the project as Astronaut Linda Godwin, an Oak Ridge native, prepared for her first space flight.

"The students worked with real enthusiasm," Green said. "It also gave them experience working as a group," she said. "They delegated responsibility and then critiqued each others' proposals."