Extraterrestrial Expeditions: 2010 Poseidon Expedition to Neptune By: Abbie, Brian, Emily, and Karina

Sunday On Sunday, our first day of the space program, we designed planets using Gimp 2, an art program on our computers. Our planets are shown in the next few slides. In the planetarium, we opened Stallarium, a program that shows us where the stars will be at any point in time, date, and at any known place in the solar system.

Abbie’s Planets

Brian’s Planets

Emily’s Planets Emily B.’s first planet and bright solar system and star!

Karina’s Solar System 4 Pretty Planets to Explore. Cool Stars, and More. There’s the Milkier Way. Sun, to light the day.

Monday On Monday, we picked our groups for our mission to a distant planet or asteroid. We preformed the strange planet activity, where we observed and took pictures of a strange planet. We did one fly-by and orbit of the strange planet.

Tuesday On Tuesday, we placed our planets into solar systems. Abbie sketched our spaceship. While Karina and Emily made the patch for our group, Abbie and Brian made a model of the spaceship.

Wednesday On Wednesday we talked with NASA scientist Dr. Harri Vanhala over Skype. We had six questions for him about our mission and overall understanding of space. We also brainstormed a skit, created props and wrote a script. We preformed and recorded it in front of a blue screen.

Talk with the Scientist We asked Dr. Harri Vanhala six questions during our talk over Skype. We asked about the possibility of other life in the universe, why not many spacecraft travel to Neptune, and about his job at NASA. We found out that not many spacecraft travel to Neptune because of its distance, so closer planets are studied much more. As for the possibility of other life, he said that he believes there is other life somewhere but we are far away from discovering it.

Thursday On Thursday, I created the slideshow that you are now watching. We wrote thank-you’s to Dr. Vanhala. Our group constructed a ‘ship’ to contain an egg so when dropped from a building, it doesn’t break. Basically, our ‘ship’ was two cups filled with bubble wrap, packing peanuts, and an egg taped together and surrounded by balloons. When it was dropped from the three-story Boyd building, the egg survived!

The Poseidon Expedition

Our Mission Our mission is to send a probe to land on Neptune, the farthest planet from the sun, and the least explored, with only one mission ever. The probe would land on the planet and take samples of the surface. We would like to gain more intelligence about the scarcely researched planet. Uranus, the sister planet of Neptune is very similar and gathered information could tell us possibly about both planets.

The Probe and Instruments Our probe would be built to withstand extreme cold and storms. It is classified as a ‘lander.’ The mission would last a total of eleven years. We would send: One Panoramic Camera, one Digger Arm, one Rock Abrasion Tool, one Meteorology Instrument Suite, and one Life Experiment Suite. The Meteorology Instrument Suite measures temperature, pressure, winds etc… The Life instrument suite is designed to look for signs of life. The Digger Arm and Rock Abrasion Tool drill into the ground and rocks to take samples. The mission in total would cost approximately 700 million dollars.

The End Yeah