BANGOR, Maine — As Halloween approaches, many kids are spending their weekends visiting farms with their families to pick pumpkins. For Oliver and other kids at the Challenger Learning Center though, their spending this Saturday launching them.
"I felt my whole body vibrate!" Oliver Rosby said while running to grab a small pumpkin he launched from a wooden catapult.
Education Director Sarah Raymond-Boyan says the event gives kids a chance to design their own pumpkin satellite and launch it at a moon target.
"They'll get to experiment a little bit with how much they have to pull to be able to get their pumpkin to launch and get that nice classic parabola arch," Raymond-Boyan said.
Challenger Learning Center staff explained how the different activities provide kids with a fun and engaging way to learn STEM skills and see how science, technology, engineering, and math can all be applied in the real world.
"Specifically, our theme is celebrating the recent launch of the Europa Clipper which is a satellite that's going to fly all the way out to Jupiter and do some flybys of one of its moons Europa," Raymond-Boyan said.
Students from UMaine's WiSe-Net Lab even let attendees get a look at examples of satellites the university has launched to gather information related to climate change.
"When a lot of people think about space-related studies, and satellites, and rockets it seems out of touch, it seems very far away, and I think one of our goals is to kind of ground that," Mechanical Engineering Student Josiah Bloom said.
Bloom says the event is something he would've loved as a kid and that opportunities to introduce kids to STEM at an early age are invaluable.
"It's about striking a balance between entertaining and teaching and I think there's a lot of overlap between those," Bloom said.
Attendees also had the chance to test their technologic skills with some remote-controlled robotic arms space-themed virtual reality simulations. With everything he was able to learn about satellites and stem, Oliver says he feels confident he has the tools to have his pumpkin make it into orbit.
"The solar panels makes it look like it's saying 'hi' with its hands, and these are kind of its eyes, but it can contact Earth with this one and sense if somethings coming after it with this one," Oliver said while showing off his pumpkin.
If you're interested in learning more about STEM-related events like this at the Challenger Learning Center, you can visit their website here.