Future of space discovery

Baldwin High School students huddled around Kobie Boykins, a mechanical engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City on Feb. 6. Excited, they bombarded Boykins with questions about Mars and space exploration, after which they received a private tour of the museum.

“As a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut,” said James Goveia, 17, a Baldwin High School senior. “I’ve come to the Cradle of Aviation for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never had a private tour, so that was a lot of information I never knew.”

More than 400 students from a number of Nassau County schools came to the Cradle of Aviation Museum for a full day of interactive activities inspired by Mars exploration. The young people listened attentively in the museum’s planetarium as Boykin detailed his experiences in helping to design Mars rovers, like the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, which launched in 2012. Boykin also shared photographs of Mars and the four rovers that have landed on the red planet, and touched on the presence of water there, adding that the planet could have once sustained life.

“Hopefully for these students, this is a stepping stone for them to believe, hey, I can do this too,” Boykin said of their experience at the museum. He said he hopes “they can connect in a way that’s not like watching TV.”

After Boykins’s presentation, students had the chance to engage in interactive activities like handling miniature rovers on a 25-by-25-foot vinyl Mars map, provided by the Buzz Aldrin Share Space Foundation. The map also highlighted Mars’s colorful topography as well as the landing sites of Mars rovers.

Younger students simulated the technology used to shield the rover from extreme heat as it enters Mars’s atmosphere with paper plates and aluminum foil. The activities helped think out of the box to use creative solutions to engage in science and engineering.

“I think they’re a little bit in awe of what they’re seeing,” said Scott Peritz, a Baldwin High School technology teacher. “I think [this] is a great opportunity for them to see the immediate past, and how the technology of yesteryear is affecting them today. I think it’s terrific.”

“One of the aspects we’ve seen already is the history of aviation and how it’s connected to Long Island, and how this was kind of the birthplace for flight and aviation,” said Vincent Leis, another Baldwin High technology teacher. “I think the kids are very surprised that this history is in their backyard.”

Boykins said he is passionate about brining space exploration to life for young people by connecting them with astronauts and engineers. “It’s easy to read a book,” he said, “but you can’t always connect with a book. You can’t always connect with a video of somebody, but seeing them live and being able to interact, I think that’s where you get that connection. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”