NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) has funded a grant for the West Virginia high school Mountaineer Area RoboticS (MARS) program to build Lego® models of the spacecraft to be used as educational materials and even as a prop on the TV show The Big Bang Theory! MARS, a FIRST Robotics Team, the NASA IV&V ERC, and WVU math professor Dr. Marjorie Darrah submitted the grant. As part of the project, 35 Morgantown, WV high school students are earning funding for their FIRST team by creating Lego® model replicas of the MMS probes. The collaboration will also result in the development of a poster, educator guide, and Space Math activities, which will be posted online on Space Math.

Right - The second Thrust Tube for MMS was delivered to the Propulsion clean room where engineers will begin propulsion system assembly for Spacecraft #2. Image Credit: NASA.

MMS is a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes: magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence. These processes play a major role in the dynamics of the geospace enviroment and in the proceses known as space weather. To learn more about the mission and its processes visit the Mission Details page.

For those of you who are not familar with the The Big Bang Theory, it is an American television sitcom that airs on CBS network at 8/7c. The main characters are two brilliant physicists that understand how the universe works, but they fail in interacting with people, especially woman. To learn more about show visit CBS: The Big Bang Theory and keep an eye out for MARS's lego® model on the show :) Left - The Big Bang Theory Cast: Image Credit CBS