The Mars Rover and the Story of a Curious Little Girl

[Judi Lynn]

An e-mail from Brazil reminds the author of how important it is to inspire young women to love science

By Duilia de Mello on July 29, 2020



Three years ago, I received an e-mail from a 10-year-old girl I'll named Ann, from Brazil, my native country, asking me several questions. Is there life on Mars? Do you control the Curiosity [rover]? Does NASA have a lot of technology? Do you work with research? Do you know many scientists? Do you know the president of the United States?

I was so pleased to see a girl asking me these questions, since that I would also have been fascinated by rovers on Mars at her age. I grew up admiring NASA’s missions to explore the solar system and wondered how they were able to send photos back to Earth from millions of miles away. I was the only girl I knew who had a favorite spaceship, and those missions were the reason I decided to become an astronomer.

I knew I had to meet that curious little girl so I wrote back to her teacher and scheduled to visit them in Rio de Janeiro at Redes da Maré, a nonprofit organization designed to increase the quality of life for local residents, including through additional educational opportunities. I had visited Redes da Maré before as part of my own outreach program to trigger kids' curiosity by telling them about the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. This time, I brought a few meteorites to teach them about the solar system. I showed them how it’s interconnected because it formed out of the same enormous cloud of gas and dust. We talked about life on other planets, and about the fact that they were touching a rock from space. The girl who had written to me took her role as guardian of the meteorites during the lecture seriously, knowing how special the specimens were.

While I was there, I kept thinking how surreal the situation was. I traveled from the United States to meet a 10-year-old girl who was surrounded by poverty but who knew there were rovers on Mars. I met her again last year during the filming of a documentary on empowering women at the same Redes da Maré. But the 12-year-old was not as fascinated by rovers as the 10-year-old was. She asked me about music and if I knew K-pop, her favorite genre. I asked her how she was doing in school and she confessed that she didn’t like her math teacher in the public school. She had left Redes because she was now living far away with her aunt. She came that day just to see me.

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mars-rover-and-the-story-of-a-curious-little-girl/