Once upon a time, on the distant planet of Mars, in the vast, reddish, rocky landscape, an event occurred that changed our understanding of the Red Planet. This event didn’t involve towering Martians or flying saucers, but rather something much smaller: the discovery of “blueberries.”
“Blueberries” on Mars
The ‘blueberries,’ as the NASA Science Team affectionately named them, were not sweet, juicy fruits but tiny, spherical, iron-rich formations. They were discovered by an intrepid visitor from Earth, a robotic explorer named Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. While carrying out its important mission of surveying and understanding the Martian terrain, Oppy stumbled upon these fascinating formations scattered over the Martian terrain like a blanket.
The blueberries were not just special because of their unexpected beauty on the stark Martian landscape; they carried within them a tale older than humanity itself. You see, these little blueberries are concretions formed through a slow, meticulous process that happens in the presence of water. Yes, water! The elixir of life as we know it. On Earth, wherever there is water, there is life.
In 2004, their existence on Mars presented a tantalising clue, whispering tales of a past when water, perhaps lots of it, flowed on Mars. Maybe rivers and seas splashed and murmured under Martian skies, just as they do on our home planet. The blueberries were saying, “Look closer, there’s more to our red planet than meets the eye.” More than twenty years after this discovery, we have learned so much about Mars—this knowledge we want to share with your students.
What we do in the planetarium
We named our planetarium The Mars Blueberry, inspired by this discovery. It is a classroom-size, dome-like structure filled with projections of countless stars and galaxies, just like its namesake on Mars, a small but significant entity carrying within it vast, incredible stories of the cosmos. Our planetarium runs on software created under a NASA grant, with support from Swedish space and research institutions. It is unique in New Zealand in that it runs on the scientific databases that space scientists worldwide use to visualise their results. Your students explore space with real photos from Mars, the Moon and other moons, the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They look closely at asteroid and Kuiper Belt databases, exoplanets, and galaxy surveys. We can take off from your school and land on the Moon or Mars. Go up above and visit the International Space Station and look at all the 14,000+ satellites flying around the Earth right now.
What is like to be a space scientist?
Both of us (Hari and Sam) have science backgrounds. Hari is an astrobiologist who trained as a Mars analog astronaut and interned at NASA Ames, and Sam is an astrophysicist and former Air Force pilot. We teach based on our own scientific interests and space experience, and we know what it is like to be a space scientist.
We look forward to showing you the Universe in the Mars Blueberry.
Hari and Sam
