Outer Space Mission

Last class we sent "probes" to "distant solar systems", mimicking the goals of the Breakthrough Starshot program, in order to gather vital information for potentially settling those planets. 

This class, "after their long voyage", our little student scientists received their first "data transmissions" from the water, soil, oxygen, and thermal camera sensors. These advanced probes (the instructor's phone) used flashes of light to transmit Morse Code to the students who had to decode the signal. They found that long verbose messages like "the water probe found water" is very long and hard to transmit. We discussed the value of data compression and the students then came up with a great two-character code for each sensor. The previous probe message was abbreviated to "WY" for "Water: yes" for example. With this short hand they were able to record all the data from the remote probes and determined which of the three systems was best suited to harbor our human space pioneers.