From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Jan 01 2004 - 16:29:43 PST
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=1107306
S.A. student spends less than NASA to test Mars crop results
By Karen Adler
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 01/01/2004 12:00 AM
While the international space community spends millions on unmanned missions to Mars, an eighth-grader at Keystone School is conducting a much cheaper experiment of her own to find out if life is possible on the Red Planet.
"Since everyone's trying to have Mars missions, it'd be helpful to know you can go up there and grow something while you're there," said 14-year-old Sasha Rohret, who thought of the experiment two years ago after watching a television program about Mars.
To find out, she planted 72 lima bean seeds in four 10-gallon glass aquariums that simulate the environments on Earth and Mars. She'll present her findings at the Alamo Regional Science and Engineering Fair the first weekend of March.
It took Sasha a month to prepare the aquariums for the experiment, she said. Each had to be completely free of contamination, pressurized and sealed. Sasha cut holes in the glass top and slipped in copper tubes so that each of the seedlings — 18 in each box — could be watered
She and her dad bought four pounds of "Martian" soil from a company in Iowa that supplies similar materials to NASA. The heavy, iron-rich soil is taken from volcanoes in Hawaii and is microscopically identical to the soil found on Mars, her father, David Rohret, said.
The order for Martian air lifted a few eyebrows at Houston-based Matheson Gas.
Mars atmosphere is about 95 percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent argon and 0.15 percent oxygen — unfit for human life By comparison, Earth's atmosphere contains almost 21 percent oxygen.
"When you ask for argon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hardly any oxygen, they get a little concerned," Rohret said.
The entire project cost about $1,500 — pocket change when compared to the $370 million price tag on Beagle 2, the British-built Mars lander that was supposed to arrive on the Red Planet on Christmas Day. The European Space Agency has yet to receive any communication from the craft.
This month, the United States plans to put two rovers on Mars. The first should arrive Saturday.
It may be possible to incorporate data gleaned from the rover into her presentation, said Sasha, whose love of science comes from her father, an astronomy buff.
Two weeks into the eight-week growing season of her experiment, healthy lima beans are growing in two aquariums: one with Earth atmosphere and Earth soil and the other with Earth atmosphere and Mars soil. However, the seedlings planted in the two aquariums with Mars atmosphere have yet to sprout.
Sasha has deduced oxygen is making the difference.
The University of Michigan has done a similar experiment, but not to the extent of Sasha's project, said Scott Maderer, a chemistry and physics teacher at Keystone.
Donald Howk, Keystone's science department head, said, "This is the type of project that NASA and the European Space Agency and people going to Mars are going to be interested in. The results she gets will actually be useful some day to the first people to visit Mars."
Howk said he will try to contact NASA when her experiment is concluded.
"She's an outstanding student," he said. "She's excited and she loves to learn."
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