Students Design Experiments For Mars

If there is life on Mars, Centennial High School sophomores in Meridian think they may be able to find it.

Wendy Halverson, Dan Pavlinik, Eric Palferyman and Sean Parrish have been designing experiments that astronauts could perform on a trip to the red planet.

For their efforts, they were selected regional finalists in the NASA/National Science Teachers Association’s Mars Scientific Experiment Competition.

The prize is a trip to the Mars Symposium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

“There were only 10 people selected out of the whole region and four of them are from Centennial and all from the same class,” Parrish said.

They all entered the competition as an assignment for their sophomore honors biology class.

Among the experiments is an attempt to prove Mars’ lower gravity causes a form of osteoporosis in newborn mice. That could be applied to the human race. Mouse bone mass would be monitored to see if their spines are hunched.