Marian Middle School, which serves families from lower-income backgrounds and is the only all-girls private middle school in the St. Louis community serving urban adolescent youth in a faith-based environment, is having an out-of-this-world experience.
In 1989, NASA first studied a long-term plan to send astronauts to Mars after establishing a permanent base on the Moon. A decade later, Marian was founded in St. Louis.
NASA released its plan and timetable for its first crewed Mars mission, including transportation, habitation, and science in 2022. Marian is among schools helping to advance student education and knowledge of the historic project.
Through the Plant the Moon/Mars Challenge, sponsored by the Institute of Competition Sciences, Marian competed to see who can grow the best crops using lunar and Martian “regolith simulant.”
Students chose to experiment with the Martian simulated soil to complete experiments growing crops.
“We know that we can’t grow in Martian soil, so we need to find out the least amount of that soil can be mixed with ‘amendments’ and then grow things,” said Marian teacher Nicolle von der Heyde.
The first crop of choice was spinach, “which didn’t do so well,” according to von der Heyde.
“We redid the experiment with radish seeds, and they did very well.”
The students were able to grow radish greens with a 50/50 mix of amendments of synthetic Martian NASAS soil and amendments.
The mix of organic amendments is important because the less weight the better when it comes to missions to the moon and Mars.
“Being a part of the Marian Martian Scientists was an enjoyable and rewarding experience.” said Marian student, Essence.
“Especially being one of the lead scientists and being a part of such a good cause to help other scientists uncover many more discoveries about space.”
Fellow Marian student scientist Jannely said, “My experience with the project was something new but I enjoyed it. It was fun but messy.”
“I liked being one of the lead scientists and how I had to collect data as a real scientist would. Throughout the project I learned new things about planting plants in different types of soils.”
Determining how lunar and Martian soils must be adjusted to grow crops for future human missions is essential to establishing permanent settlements on celestial bodies, according to NASA and ICS.
“Learning the biological capabilities of Martian soil will also help sustain human life on Mars.
Marian students were sent a Plant the Moon Activity Kit, which included the Martian regolith simulant, a Project Guide and pH paper. The teams used the Project Guide to define its own plant growth experiments using the stimulant.
Marian students’ experience with the Mars project could also lead to future careers in STEM – a field where Black women are “significantly underrepresented” compared to their population proportion.
According to the National Science Foundation, African American women represent around 2% of the science and engineering workforce.
More Black female STEM students could increase the small percentage of scientists and engineers, and gaps in STEM fields including computer science and engineering where the percentage is lower than 2%.
A natural result of the absence of students is the fact that Black women also earn a disproportionately small percentage of STEM degrees, especially at the doctoral level.
Marian is moving to improve those statistics.
The students defined their own experiment parameters such as the structure of the plant growth setup, amount of water used, and nutrients or fertilizer added to the regolith simulant to help support plant growth.
In addition, the plant growth the students were also encouraged to create their own “Mission Patch,” just like the ones that accompany all astronauts into space.
“We learned the how and why of mission patches and we created one,” said von der Heyde.
While the project is literally groundbreaking for Marian, its emphasis on STEM education is continuously in growth.
In addition to science and math classes, all students are enrolled in STEM Lab and have the opportunity to participate in culinary arts, mass media club, robotics, and STEM Club.
STEM classes include Electricity, Automotive Engineering, Building and Design, Veterinary Science, Financial Literacy, Robotics, Advanced Robotics, and Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (IMACS)