Mission To Mars

Connemara Maths Academy is back at Glenstal Abbey School with this year’s STEAM Academy.

This season, students take on the real problems a crew would face in the first 100 days on the Red Planet: food, power, shelter, dust, communication and survival. They invent solutions, build a short AI website and pitch to a Dragons’ Den. They write jingles and produce radio and TV ads with professional musicians. They code, print in 3D and get hands-on with robotics, electricity and magnetism.

The first session landed on Saturday, and it was a Dragons’ Den from the off. Teams of five picked one Mars problem, tested the idea against the real constraints of the planet, mocked up a short AI website for their invention and pitched it to the panel. The room had the lot: labelled sketches, CAD desings, one-sentence pitches, a spinning Hubble globe, and finally students on their feet selling water systems, habitats, power and dust solution and more as as they pitched their ideas and presented their websites.

The Glenstal Students were terrific this weekend and looked very much like the the innovators of the future!.

Enjoy images from the first day…