Whether your young explorer dreams of landing on the Red Planet, searching for extraterrestrials, finding the ultimate home away from home on another planet or delving into the mysterious world of the dinosaur, the New Mexico Space Academy’s summer camp program has just the right camp. Registration is underway for the state’s summer science camp for cadets entering grades kindergarten through 12th grade at the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Camp begins the first week of June and continues through the last week of July, with new sessions starting each Monday.
With rovers rolling across Mars and more proves on the way, Homesteading Marsis a natural for fledgling astronauts. In this camp, cadets will learn the basics of cleaning water on Mars, or Earth, and how to design and build a greenhouse to grow their own food. They’ll even get the chance to look for life that once might have made the Red Planet green.
Aspiring young engineers will get a chance to take their first steps into space with One Giant Leap: Space 101. Cadets will build their own satellite model and a solar weather station, then they’ll go underwater to learn the basics of building and repairing vehicles in orbit. Next, they’ll find out why rockets are just flying tea kettles and why it really is rocket science that makes them work.
What’s more exciting than exploring new planets? Why, finding life there, of course. Alien Hunters: Mission to Europa is the search for extraterrestrial life and this summer cadets travel to Jupiter’s icy moon. They’ll discover the basics of hunting for extraterrestrial life, like extracting DNA from cells, performing an Alien Autopsy and decoding messages from space.
A little closer to home, cadets will get rich and save Earth at the same time with Rex Rocket’s Asteroid Round-Up. Cadets will learn the basics of prospecting on an asteroid in space and how to keep asteroids from sending us the way of the dinosaur. They’ll make their own deep impact with meteorite simulations and get to meet Coelophysis, a local dinosaur that is now the state fossil.