Last Friday the OeWF team travelled to Mars and back! To make it a fascinating event not only for us but also for children, we invited dozens of kids to explore Mars. You do not believe me?! I’ll included a few pictures to back up my words!

The children not only had a unique opportunity to walk on Mars, but they also could operate the Dignity Rover. If ruled correctly and precisely, the Rover would bring a Mars candy bar to a child as a reward for a well-done job. That is not all, a greater reward was the views of Mars transmitted from the rover to the screens in front of the children. Therefore, the little astronauts were very interested in exploring more and more exciting places.

Definitely, the exploration would not have happened without special spacesuits. The process of putting on the suit was a ritual worth observing again and again! When our first little astronaut came, and Dr. Groemer took a helmet to put it on her, he told me, “Look attentively at her face at the moment – putting on a helmet is a special thing!” So I did. It is hard to express in words what one can observe on a kid’s face at the moment when the helmet is going down his or her face. I had a honour to put the helmet on more than 30 kids, I think, but I did not get tired of looking at their reactions. I saw the eyes full of excitement or confusion, happiness or a slight fear of unknown, confidence or questions marks. Their smiles would become wider and wider and the eyes would shine brighter and brighter. How proud they were of themselves!

In addition to this amusing program, two rockets were launched. If you want to know more about how this exciting activity usually proceeds, you can find out more on the OeWF Facebook page.

Coming back to reality, everything written above is true except for the tiny fact – we were on Mars which was created by us on the Earth. Few members of the OeWF team had a pleasure to take part in a Tyrolean Women’s Run Event, one of the major annual events in Innsbruck. We had a “space station” there as part of family programme. The eyes of the kids could be read, “Wow! Fascinating! What other surprises are there for me? I rather try everything: walking on Mars in a spacesuit, operating the Dignity Rover, participating in a rocket launch! Yes! Now I am a true astronaut!”

Author: Irsana Payzullaeva