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Arizona Science Center showcases the science behind the fiction

Anya Magnuson
Guest Experience Manager Mark Martinez demonstrates the states of matter with liquid nitrogen, Sept. 20, 2016.

Over the weekend, members of the public experienced the frontier of space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life through Alien Life and Androids, a new exhibit at the Arizona Science Center. 

Featuring characters from popular culture and popular science alike, the exhibit explores real-life research through categories such as remote controlled rovers and microbial life.

The exhibits featured interactive elements like a controllable robotic arm that stacks foam blocks and a meteorite that attendees could touch while learning about its composition. 

The pop culture icons within the exhibit were used to bridge the gap between fiction and reality. R2-D2's tasks of exploring unknown planets for Luke Skywalker are compared to the Curiosity Rover's task of discerning if Mars can support life.

“(Science Fiction is) a common ground to start the conversation for why science and technology are important to have," said Fari Caster, vice president of exhibits at the Science Center. 

This approach appears to be working.

"I enjoyed seeing the applicable realities behind some of my favorite movies," said Isabel Eusebio, a global studies junior at ASU. "It made me want to explore more into what we could build and how we can progress in the future."

The type of technology featured within the exhibit not only exemplifies NASA's work, but also work being done at ASU, especially within ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Alien research is an everyday activity at SESE. The school hosts one of the most extensive meteorite collections within the country. The faculty of SESE combine their work with the efforts of other laboratories across the nation, ensuring missions, such as the Curiosity Rover, don't encounter any difficulties. 

Some of these meteors host organic material that can give insight into the history of our planet.

"(The organic material) varies, but it gets at the basic idea that it can feed life," said Jefferson Fleming, a docent at SESE. "Can it start life? We do not know, but the idea is that we can feed life and keep it going."

SESE is currently preparing for a new mission, Luna-H, where a cube satellite will be put into orbit around the Earth's moon to search for frozen hydrogen at the moon's poles. These deposits, if found, could possibly be used to fuel engines for travel into deeper space.

LunaH-Map mission to the Moon - SESE - Arizona State University from Arizona State University on Vimeo.

Ultimately, the exhibit provides students of ASU a chance to experience first-hand a category of research performed within the university. It is a nexus where the student is encouraged to learn about the work being done in space exploration and bring that information back to their dorm with them.

"The exhibit gave me a really great perspective on what we are able to do now," Eusebio said. "I came to the exhibit because it was cheap this weekend, but I didn't think I'd walk away feeling humbled that ASU is helping pioneer this type of research."


Reach the reporter at mconturs@asu.edu or follow @mattio55 on Twitter.

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