An Inner City Camp With Its Sights Set On Outer Space
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Today's middle schoolers may become the generation of engineers that puts a man on Mars, and so a science camp at Temple University, today, challenged its students to try to build a Mars lander.
Remember that scene in 'Apollo 13' where scientists have to save the astronauts with duct tape and cardboard?
Camper Ishani says the Mars Lander challenge was sort of like that.
"We used bubble wrap for the parachute, pipe-cleaners to hold the bubble-wrap up, card stock as a base," said Ishani.
Ishani's team won, but the real victory is her new aspiration.
"Now I actually want to be a chemist or an engineer, physicist," she said.
The camp is sponsored by the Bernard Harris Foundation. Harris overcame a rough start to become a NASA astronaut, the first African-American to walk in space, and he wanted to help others do the same.
Temple has been hosting it since 2008 and professor Susan Varnum says the foundation tracks alumni.
"100 percent acceptance rate into college," Varnum says. "Many more children from low income communities looking for AP classes, looking for high school science programs and maybe, someday, looking for a way to land on mars."