Rover Exploration Challenge: The Boardgame for Outreach

As part of our work under my Early Career Researcher Award grant from the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science, we have been developing outreach materials to share the excitement of space exploration with the public. We've previously run two events at the Ontario Science Centre and now we have created a home version. While you won't find this board game in stores, we've made the game freely available to all. Just download the template, print it out, assemble and enjoy.

by Dr. Christina Smith

So as you may have already read, we here at the PVL have put on an event known as the Rover Exploration Challenge, where members of the public take the role of scientists on a rover mission to the  unknown planet of “Arduinna”, using the “rover” to explore the planet to find out whether it is habitable. If you want to find more about the Rover Exploration Challenge event, take a look at Charissa’s blog post http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-successful-rover-exploration-challenge.html

After successfully doing this challenge a few times and for a range of audiences, John posed the question of whether there was any way we could package it into something people could take home and play themselves, like a board game. I grew up playing board games with my family and friends (everything from standard kids board games all the way up to seriously long games – and yes I used to lose those a lot) so I took the lead on the conversion.

So, what’s it like researching in the PVL!?

This week Ariella reflects on her time spent with the lab over the summer as a TEPS fellow. Above, she is pictured at the Lassonde Undergraduate Research Conference alongside Noah Stanton, another of our Summer Researchers. We wish her well as she enters into her final year of her undergraduate career and sets her sights on what lies beyond!

By Ariella Sapers

Over the last 4-5 months I’ve spent my time being an undergraduate researcher for the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory at York University, which was a huge change to my previous research experience.

I’m used to staring at stars in my previous research projects - but now, it was all about Mars! For starters, I did not realize the amount of incredible Mars research that is done in this lab ... and worldwide. I was very naive before I started - as my head had always been stuck in astrophysics research – so I didn’t realize the cool research that’s conducted in the Planetary Sciences! Before this, the only experience I had was a Planets and Planetary Systems course taught at York University by Dr. John Moores, which is what intrigued me in the first place.

This research experience didn’t just let me work in a cool lab ... I got to attend two conferences throughout the summer. The first was the TEPS conference. This conference was the Technologies for (Exo) Planetary Sciences which allowed all award holders to come for a three-day conference. TEPS is an NSERC CREATE Program that allows undergrads, masters, PHD and Post Docs to be trainees. I was lucky enough to have received one of these awards which officially made me a TEPS Trainee! This meant I got to attend the TEPS conference and meet a lot of Planetary Scientists. The vast amount of research being conducted on Mars, exoplanets and the moon is incredible. It also showed me what masters students and PhD students are working on - since I’m close to graduating, it was nice to see the endeavours of graduate students.