Public engagement
We used Mars inspiration as way to spread our proyect to the society. Concretly, we discovered in the Planetarium of Pamplona a beautiful way to create our “own symbolic crew mission” through NASA´s MARS2020 Mission.
As in previous InSight mission, NASA made a call to the world and proposed an initiative to send a rover to Mars in 2020. This rover, apart from exploring the surface of Mars, will also include a microchip with names from all the world who inscribed themselves at this initiative in its web page. As the project of this year consists on sending plants to Mars, we wanted to bring our family, friends, teachers. classmates and all the society of Navarre closer to Mars and the space and what better than sending them to Mars with the initiative of NASA.
Apart from sending them to Mars, we also did a list with the people who inscribed with us to this initiative (more than 500 persons), to bring them with us to Boston like that, the society of Navarre can also be part of our crew. We did a blanket with all the names that we’ll take to Boston so they will literally be part of our tripulation.
If you want to know more about this mission, go to end of this page, please.
Event in the Planetarium of Pamplona 31/08/2019
The 31st of August we went to the Planetarium of Pamplona to talk with the public and collect suggestions about the project. We obtained a permission to put a stand in the hall of the planetarium, so people of all ages came, we told them what our project is about and they asked all the questions they had. That afternoon we were explaining what the synthetic biology is, we talked about iGEM context and we also invited them to register in the initiative of NASA called Mars 2020.
We wanted both older and children to enjoy this event and with us so we prepared Mars drawings for children to paint how they thought Mars was, with this paintings they could also got interest in the space and our project. We had some computers to help people to register in the initiative of Mars 2020 and a box to put all the suggestions or ideas people made to help us improving the project. We promoted the project in social networks and we put up posters with all the information about the event for Pamplona. Thanks to this posters more people came.
Laikasat team also stayed with us. This team is another student team coordinated by the Planetarium of Pamplona that participated in ESA competition called Cansat. In Planeta STEM, they don’t coordinate only our group of iGEM, they also do other activities for children and young people in order discover STEM studies. Laikasat team built a CanSAT, a satellite in a can, and sent it a kilometer high to the Navarra´s sky. They also explained their project to the public, made us some suggestions to improve our proyect and we sent their names to Mars. Sharing the event with them we made our presentation more interesting because we talked and explained much more interesting things to the public.
Laikasat´s students are going to prepare a new competition on 2020´s Spring. Navarra´s CanSAT competition is organized by Planeta STEM too, so they are going to fly into their satellite our crew names and more new names in their next mission. It will be amazing.
In conclusion, we took a lot of suggestions to improve the project and for future events.
Event in Baluarte Congress Palace, Pamplona 28/09/2019
The 28th of September we went to Baluarte to talk to all the people in Pamplona about the project and to take suggestions. We obtained the permission to put a stand in the square of Baluarte, in Pamplona, next to the periodic table in 3D that they put in the square to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the periodic table. We have been in the centre of the city, so people could see us and come to the stand. People of all the ages came and we talked about the project and they did all the questions and suggestions they had. We also talked about the initiative Mars 2020 and we collected the last tickets because the possibility of participating in the initiative ended on September 30. We also sold a lot of the cloth bags we did to collect money.
We wanted to bring children close to the project and the space, so we print Mars drawings, so that children could paint them and they also wrote what they would take to Mars. In this paintings they draw Mars like they thought it was, and then we explained how it really was, like that they could also learn more of that planet with us.
Apart from being in the stand we also walked around all the centre of Pamplona explaining very briefly the project and telling people about Mars 2020. We told them that they could come to Baluarte for more information and get the boarding pass to send their name to Mars.
Even though this was our last event we did, this project doesn’t finish here and we have a lot of ideas to do when we arrive from the GiantJamboree. When we arrive, we’ll do some scientific workshop with the kids, we’ll do some easy experiments with them so that they can also see how we work in a laboratory.
We attend “Passion for knowledge” event 10/04/2019
We went to Baluarte, the Auditory and Congress Palace of Navarra, in order to attend Passion for knowledge (P4K) event. This is a scientific event promoted by Donostia International Physics Center, and it took place each three years in San Sebastián and Bilbao, but this years it has been in Pamplona, thanks to Navarra’s Government and Pamplona’s Planetarium.
In this case, we went Arantza Arrizurieta and Amaia García representing all the team. There, we listened the first talk called Las plantas en nuestro mundo cambiante by Pamela Diggle, a Professor in the University of Connecticut, and a plant specialist. She talked about her studies about plant’s growth in Alaska, and how the climatic change affects them in their flowering phases.
One of the others talks that we attended is Pasos hacia la vida: ¡Química! by Jean-Marie Lehn, a scientist that won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987. He talked about supramolecular chemistry and it’s importance in our day to day. He also explained us how we go from being simple elements of the periodic table to complexes living beings.
When the event finished, we exchange ideas with Pamplona’s Planetarium director, Javier Armentia; Iñaki Ordóñez from the University of the Basque Country, and with the director of Donostia International Physics Centre Ricardo Diez Muiño.
We presented our proyect in our schools
We didn´t know each other when we started “iGEM Adventure” because, as the last year team-members, we study in different High Schools of Navarra.When we started with the project in May, we went to the schools to talk about what we were going to do during all the summer and we also told them that NASA's Mars 2020 initiative was going so that they could also send their names to Mars. When we finished the period in the laboratory and we started with the classes in the schools again in September, each member of the group went to our different schools and did a presentation telling how the project went during all the summer and what we did.
Aitor’s presentation in his school ojo fotos se me han descuadrado.
First of all, we explained last year’s team project. Then we talked about the additions we have made from the previous project and about all the experimentation we did in all the summer in the laboratory. After that we talked about all the human practices and the public engagements we did and the ones that we were going to do before going to Boston, we also told them all the important and interesting people and scientists we met during the summer. Finally we explained again the initiative Mars 2020 and told them that they could still to the boarding passes.
Our primary PI and secondary PI came with us to all the schools so they talked about Planeta STEM and all the projects that it has to all the students that are interested in science like the FIRST LEGO League (STEM Proyect about robots) or Cansat (European Space Agency´s STEM proyect to create a satellite by students). They also talked about iGEM and show them the web page and last year’s contest photographs.
Our Blog + Socialmedia
We made a blog in Pamplona´s Planetarium web-page in order to explain our proyect to the general public. We wrote our text in English, Spanish and Basque, and we sent our publications in a newsletter every week more than 3000 persons. Some people asked more information about our proyect.
We used Instagram (@igem_biogalaxy) and twitter (@NavarraBG_STEM) to show our Biogalaxy proyect. ¡Follow us!
Media
We want to bring all the society of Navarre to know our project, and what better way to communicate it and talk about it through the media.
The first interview we had was the 30th of August and we did for Diario de Noticias newspaper with Paula Sarmiento. At first we did some photographs outside, we did some portraits and we also did photographs of the whole group with our Primary PI, secondary PI and our instructors. After doing all the photos they needed, we went to the library of the Institute of agrobiotechnology and we did the interview. We talked about the project, iGEM contest and much more things. Finally, we appeared in newspaper’s first page.
We also did an interview for Euskalerria Irratia radio the 3rd of September, with Lohizune Amatria. The interviewer came to the lab and we explained what we had been doing during all the summer, we talked about iGEM contest, we described the devices that we have used the most like the eppendorf, the pipette or the confocal microscope… We also talked about the human practices we did and the ones we were going to do before going to contest.
We also did an interview for one of the students of the University of Navarra, she had to do a reportage about human resources and she chose our team because she was interested in our young investigator’s role. We answered all her questions and we talked about the project.
Mailope Magazine asked for an interview too. That publication interviewed our Team´s PI´s Sarah and Karmele, one of our team members, Saioa, and a member who belongs to last year´s team, Hodei. The reason was that Saioa and Hodei are from the same área of Navarra, just the publication´s zone. Con esta frase tengo dudas, por si es “menor el impacto” del reportaje.
On 15th of October Diario de Navarra Newspaper´s journalist Jesús Rubio interviewed us while we were preparing the wiki and the presentation. He said us that he was going to publish the interview just two or three days before our travel to Boston. So, we can´t show the final result, but here you have the pictures of our meeting.
MARS2020 MISSION - NASA´s information.
Image Credit: NASA
The Mars 2020 rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key questions about the potential for life on Mars. The mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth. That would help scientists study the samples in laboratories with special room-sized equipment that would be too large to take to Mars. The mission also provides opportunities to gather knowledge and demonstrate technologies that address the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars. These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.
The mission is timed for a launch opportunity in July 2020 when Earth and Mars are in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars. That is, it takes less power to travel to Mars at this time, compared to other times when Earth and Mars are in different positions in their orbits. To keep mission costs and risks as low as possible, the Mars 2020 design is based on NASA's successful Mars Science Laboratory mission architecture, including its Curiosity rover and proven landing system.
Image Credit: NASA
Even though this was our last event we did, this project doesn’t finish here and we have a lot of ideas to do when we arrive from the GiantJamboree. When we arrive, we’ll do some scientific workshop with the kids, we’ll do some easy experiments with them so that they can also see how.