Mars festival brings out space enthusiasts
The Mars Exploration Celebration festival gathered crowds of space enthusiasts to downtown Mars to watch presentations, participate in hands-on science activities and learn about a variety of extraterrestrial topics this weekend.
The festival runs from Friday and Saturday and is operated by the Mars New Year Committee. In the past, it was referred to as Mars New Year.
The event celebrates the New Year on the planet Mars, which occurs every 687 days, or roughly two years. The most recent New Year on Mars was Feb. 7, 2021, and the next will arrive on Dec. 26, 2022.
Previous iterations of the event have drawn NASA speakers to Mars to give presentations. Because of COVID-19 concerns, this year's NASA component was conducted virtually, and due to some technical difficulties the majority of the remote speeches were scheduled for Saturday.
Borough Mayor Gregg Hartung said the Mars New Year Committee put in a lot of work to get the festival ready.
“It's been a big undertaking with the presentations shifting from live presentations to remote,” he said. “I have a committee of about 30 people who have helped tremendously in getting this all together. We appreciate those volunteers because, otherwise, this wouldn't have happened.”
“We went from zero to a festival in just a couple months,” added Mars New Year Committee member Mike Harvey.
Dr. Andy Aldrin, son of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, spoke at the festival Friday evening. He is president of the Aldrin Family Foundation, a Florida nonprofit dedicated to STEM education.At the festival, the foundation displayed several giant ground maps of Mars and the moon, which will be used in Mars Area School District STEM programs in the future.“We're excited about educating students across our area because of the Aldrin Family Foundation,” said Hartung.In his presentation, Aldrin spoke on the topic of space commercialization and the future of the space industry. He is involved with the Center for Space Entrepreneurship at Florida Tech. “There are either people who are cheerleaders (for commercialization), and there are people who don't think it's going to happen,” he said, describing himself as “agnostic” about the success of commercialization in space.“We do a great job training the greatest engineers in the United States, but you need to be more than a great engineer in this business,” he said. “You need to be a great leader. You need to understand the overall ecosystem. You need to be a lot more.”
Representatives from Pittsburgh lunar logistics startup Astrobotic brought mock-ups of lunar rovers to the festival, and mission director Sharad Bhaskaran spoke onstage to share news about the company's upcoming Peregrine mission, set to launch in 2022.“We are potentially the first commercial company to try and land on the moon,” he said. “It's historic, and we're doing this out of Pittsburgh. It's really an opportunity for Pittsburgh to become a space city.”Bhaskaran explained that the mission, which is about a year away from launch, will not send humans to the moon, but it is still a “very challenging prospect.”“I'm very happy to be here tonight, and proud of what Astrobotic is trying to accomplish,” he said.Kerry Quinn, a member of Astrobotic's rover team, showed off the rover mockups at the festival.“We're in the middle of a whole lot of testing now,” he said. “Our whole team gets up in the morning and thinks about driving on the moon. We spook ourselves sometimes.”
Visitors were excited to participate in science-themed activities, eat food from local businesses such as Stick City Brewing and BeBe Kakes as well as from food trucks, and dress up in outer space themed costumes. “My wife and I come to this for different reasons,” said Mars resident Joe Stavish. “She comes for the science, and I come for all the alien-themed things,” he said.Joe and his wife, Amanda, who teaches science in the Mars Area School District, have attended the festival in years past. “We definitely love coming to this,” Joe Stavish said. “This is a big excitement for the town.”“I've been hyping this up with the students,” added Amanda Stavish.More components were scheduled for Saturday, including an award ceremony for the Mars STEAM challenge kids' science competition and a science comedy performance.The event closed in the evening with a light-up drone show from Detroit-based drone company Firefly Drones.
