Today was bittersweet for us. Although it is wonderful to have had an amazing experience at the summit, it is also sad to leave the new friends we have made.

 

We started off the day with our last meal at the Hawaii University Hilo cafeteria, and then went to the Imiloa Centre for our last presentations. The first was on leadership by Janesse Brewer, from 23.Four Degrees; this workshop was very engaging for us. We worked both as one large group, and in our school groups discussing how to improve STEM education (S.T.E.M. – science, technology, engineering, mathematics) in our own countries.

 

Later on we ate a catered lunch at Imiloa, during the meal we were able to meet a very exciting group of people! After having participated in a 4 month long simulation of life on Mars, a team of 6 people from around the world joined us for lunch, allowing us to ask them any questions we had. Not only had they spent four months in isolation; they had only finished this simulation mere hours before meeting us. We were the first group of people they had seen in four months. The simulation entailed being unable to leave a large tent like structure, which they had lived in, without putting on a space suit. They did have communication with the outside world, but as it would be if they were living on Mars, all communication was delayed by 20 minutes.

 

After meeting this team of people we listened to our last keynote. It was about a company called Oceanit, presented by Ian Kitajima. Oceanit is a Hawaii based company that is full of some of the most brilliant people in the science community. A large part of what this company does is creating innovative technology in all aspects of science. Examples presented to us included; paint that heals cracks when it dries, and biofuel technology. One of the most standout things is the creation of concrete that can sense things like, weight that is on it, when it is cured, and cracks or any other issues.

 

To finish the day we had a small closing ceremony where we received certificates for our completion of the summit. After saying our goodbyes we headed to the Gemini Telescope headquarters with the students from Molokai High School for a tour. It was incredible to see the computing power required to analyze and store the data from the instruments attached to this massive telescope.

 

After having an amazing time at the Pacific Astronomy and Engineering Summit; we are extremely excited to head over to the other side of the island. Spending some time on the beach will be a great way to end the trip!

 

—Megan. B

Thursday was certainly one of our busier days this week, packed full of workshops and student presentations. Upon arriving at the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center after breakfast, we were treated to a planetarium show called, “Back To The Moon For Good.” It was a breathtaking show explaining the Google Lunar Challenge, which is a competition to get people more interested in moon exploration. Google has offered a 30 million dollar prize to the first privately funded team that can launch a rocket to the moon and deploy a rover that can travel 500 metres while relaying video back to Earth. The catch is that there can be no government funding whatsoever; the teams must find their own funds for the competition. There are currently 30 teams entered from around the world working on their rockets and rovers. We then headed up the street to the Gemini Observatory Northern Operations Center to talk with some university students from around the US who were competing in the PISCES Robotic International Space Mining Competition. The students belonged to teams, and each team had built a rover to participate in challenges ranging from digging dirt similar to that on Mars and driving around arenas autonomously. Afterwards we returned to the ‘Imiloa Center for a fun activity called Red Rover Robotics. We were put in teams of four and we each had a small car-like robot that could be programmed to move and turn by pushing buttons beforehand. We had to program them to collect as many small objects on a sheet as possible and return them to a collection zone. The team with the most points at the end won, and it was of course the teacher team that took the prize. After lunch we had a presentation by some astronomy interns on the similarities between Hawaii, specifically Maunakea, and the surface of Mars. It was interesting to see how designing rovers to work on Maunakea can help scientists foresee problems that could arise on Mars before they send the rovers.

Our next presentation was a very interesting one by Dr Kim Binsted on preparing humans to be able to live in small spaces together on distant planets such as Mars. She talked about the HI-SEAS project which put 6 participants together in a small geo-dome, similar to what the first Mars explorers might have to live in, for four months to see how they handled it. Everything they did was accurate to Mars; they couldn't even go outside the 1000 sqft dome without wearing an astronaut suit. The coolest part was that she told us the next day we would be having lunch with the participants literally hours after they were released from their four month confinement. Our last activity of the day was called “The Ultimate Message In A Bottle.” Together we wrote a song about life on Earth that would ideally be sent on NASA’s next space probe that is going to leave our solar system. After that we had a little time to finish the preparations for our science projects before presenting.

 

The presentations began at 4:30 and ended at 9pm. We saw many intriguing projects from other groups from things like refurbishing a traditional Hawaiian canoe to students who had discovered exo-planets, and we presented our own project about the telescope mount that we are in the process of building. Our mount will be able to track the sun across the sky automatically once it is finished. We were able to bring the mount itself and demonstrate its ability to move around its axes with a remote control. Overall it was a very successful day and we are excited for our final day of the summit tomorrow.

 

—Alexander W.