America
NASA space camps to find astronauts for Mars journey
Washington, July 26
NASA is organising space
camps for the young would-be astronauts this summer and the best ones
may join the US space missions, including Mars.
Thousands of
children will gather at the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) in Florida and
the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, to learn what it
takes to be an astronaut for deeper space missions, the Guardian
reported.
The kids will have first-hand experience of
constructing and launching model rockets made of paper tubes and PVC
pipes and experiencing the pull of a microgravity simulator.
They will also be taught to plan and execute a mission on board a full-size space shuttle mock-up.
"Each activity is planned to bring out team-building and problem-solving skills among children," the US space agency said.
"It
is about allowing their natural curiosity to run its course and sowing
the seeds that might eventually lead them into space," it added.
"I'm
going to be a computer engineer, helping to launch rockets to go deeper
into space," 11-year-old Colin Cox was quoted as saying.
"The
kids believe they can be the next person in that spacecraft. We may not
be launching people now, but by the time they've finished school, we'll
be there," Kerri Lubeski, chief educator of Camp KSC, was quoted as
saying.
The Space Launch System (SLS) from NASA will be the
largest rocket ever built, with the aim of a manned mission to Mars by
the 2030s.
Its first unmanned test flight is set for no later than November 2018.