Three Mexican students were the big winners at the 1st Mars Trekker Global Teen Summit, a program developed by NASA’s Space Center Houston, Mexico’s Communications and Transportation Secretariat, or SCT, announced.
The students went with a group of 20 Mexicans and came out tops among the 120 young participants between ages 13-17, specifically in the fields of robotics, tools for 3D printing in space, and the design of possible human settlements on Mars.
“We must believe in Mexico and in the education of its young people. I firmly believe the upcoming generations will make it possible to transform Mexico into a country of world-class space and satellite development,” the director general of the Mexican Space Agency (AEM), Javier Mendieta Jimenez, said.
The AEM, which has an educational agreement with NASA, sent representatives to Houston with teens from Tlaxcala – the state where the three winners come from – and from Monterrey and the Federal District.
The winners were Javier Rivera Monter, 15, in robotics; Fatima Paola Vargas, 16, in the design of 3D printing tools for space; and Yanet Josefina Guevara, 16, in human habitat design for outer space.
Mendieta recalled that the spaceship Orion, in which NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars, has wiring and a system of harnesses developed by Mexican engineers.
At the Houston summit, young people attended teaching conferences given by NASA scientists, engineers and specialists about Mars, food and nutrition, and the spaceship Orion for planetary exploration.
The students designed human settlements that took into account the protection of the Martian environment, energy, water and its treatment, food, health, habitable and recreational areas, among other installations.
They also developed ways to place themselves in the Martian environment and imagine possible solutions for the problems that will face those attempting to establish a settlement on that planet.
The purpose of the NASA program is to find young talents from different parts of the world for its expeditions to Mars scheduled for 2030.