What was the mission or aim of your project? 

The mission of our project was to grow carrots in the martian soil to see how long it would take for the carrots to grow in the Martian soil because we thought that healthy food would be better for us on Mars since carrots provide a lot of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and others. Another thing we wanted to do was to see how the plants would grow if they were grown inside a greenhouse, built out of cardboard and popsicle sticks because a greenhouse stays warm inside even during cold winter days which we thought was suitable for Mars weather. 

Why was this your mission?

This was our mission because we thought if the plants actually grow, we will get to know more about the martian soil and find a suitable way of growing food in the soil because we know that it is difficult for food to grow in Martian soil due to the lack of nutrients in the soil and also the idea of making a greenhouse was for the vegetable to be able to grow since it would be really difficult for the carrots to grow in the very cold weathers of Mars which goes above -81C.

• What action/experiment did you take?

We planted 4 carrot seeds in the Martian soil for our project to see if they would grow in the martian soil which we know is very dry and also lacks nutrients. A greenhouse was built(with cardboard and popsicle sticks)where we put the martian soil pots inside, Lucas brought the greenhouse home and we decided to let the plants stay in the greenhouse for the whole winter break and watered it with the same amount of water every day. 

• How did you use what you learned in grade 9 science in the design? 

Mars soil has different nutrients from the soil on Earth making the plants that can grow in the soil different from the plants that can be grown in soil from Earth. Because of this, we had to try our best to make the plants grow. Our first idea was to use different plant seeds to see which one grows better but because we didn't have enough time we decided to go with only carrots instead. We also thought about using Earth soil too, since that would be the best way to compare the difference between the plants grown in Martian soil and the soil from earth which we also weren't able to complete since we didn't have enough time. 

• How does your project fit or connect with the other projects in the class?  Are we living sustainably on your chosen planet?

Our project can relate to the terraforming project because they are creating an environment for humans to live in, which also connects to ours since we are finding ways to keep our plants alive. It can also relate to the terraforming project because their plan is to cover mars with Moon dust and this could make a difference in how the plants can grow also because NASA has confirmed that plants can be grown in the soil from Moon.

• How successful was your action (it's OK if it didn't go as planned)?  Did you meet your goal?

The plants could not grow in the martian soil because, at the start of the project, we weren't doing a lot of work and left it to the end time which later gave us very less time to complete everything we wanted to, to meet our goal. I think that the plant we chose itself wasn't a good one to choose, I think planting Mustard leaves(or peas, potatoes, and tomatoes) would have been better because a study says that they grew even better in Martian soil than the Earth soil and also I think a lot of time was wasted on the making of the greenhouse, if we had used that time to plant earlier and grew the plants earlier we might've had better progress.

• What contributed to your group's success (or lack of success)?

I think what lead to our group's lack of success was the team communication, we basically divided everything and did not take ideas from each other and decided to go our own way without the opinion of our teammates which could've made this project a lot better if we had communicated more. Also, we wasted a lot of time on the greenhouse which if I think about now shouldn't have been the most important part of our project instead we should have used more time on planting the seeds into the Martian soil and growing the plants. I get the idea of making a greenhouse where we can grow plants but, it should've been a quick thing that took only 2-3 days.

• What would you do differently if you could?

we would use more ways of growing the plant, for example, using hydroponics just like the AM class did and maybe try doing earth soil too, to see the difference between the food grown in Earth's soil and Martian soil. We would also not spend so much time on making the greenhouse and focus more on our main thing, which is successfully growing the plants. We would also grow more than just 1 type of plant to see which one would grow faster and would need less water and time. And use more scientific information and add more to our Instagram slides(pictures, graphs, etc) to make it look better and show our work.

• Pitch the next phase of your project.

Changing the approach to how we would grow the plants and putting in a larger amount of research into what will grow instead of relying on hoping the martian soil would have the nutrients to grow the same plants that people are able to grow with soil from Earth. Some things we could try instead of planting plants in martian soil is something similar to hydroponics that does not depend on soil unknown if they grow or not. Also, making a greenhouse using different materials might be a good idea too. And if the plants do grow, making a graph of how much they grew in 2 weeks every day, would be a good idea too.

• Inspire a future group of students to pick up where you left off.

Do more research on the Martian soil, and try to find ways to actually grow carrots in Martian soil. Put more work into the slide show and website. Also, try different vegetables because I think maybe some different vegetables might grow better than carrots in Martian soil. 

• Why is this an important cause?  Why should they continue with it?

Food is essential to living and if there is no way to sustainably produce food on mars people would die due to hunger. Also because some other vegetables might be more healthy and make you feel full more quickly since we have to save as much as we can and not waste a lot of the parts of it. 

• Where would you like to see it go next?

Finding a plant that will successfully grow in the martian soil and seeing how it grew. I also want to hear their ideas on how they improved the project and made it work. I also want to know about the idea they came up with for the greenhouse, if they actually made one. I also want to know about anything new they came up with to make the Martian soil work in order to actually make the plants grow. I want to know about their teamwork and how they were able to communicate better than we could. 

• Each member of the group should reflect on what they learned.  You may have learned some neat stuff about science, but you also learned some other great skills like time management, goal setting, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Keaton: I learned that it's more difficult than I thought to build a greenhouse... I also learned that carrots do not seem to grow in our martian soil. This project was long and difficult. But looking back it was pretty fun. 

Haya: I learned that having teamwork would have been way better and we could've gotten a better result. Also that taking ideas from each other will make our answers way better. I also learned how to work independently and make sure to get work done on time. During the project, I also did some lab safety stuff, like being careful of where I put the hot glue gun and also using the knife and scissors carefully. I also learned to not give up till the end because we had a lot of stuff that made our project not very successful but we still decided to work on it and make sure to do so till the end. Also, I think the reason why we mostly messed up was that we had little to no team communication, we all just went on our own ways, not doing work as a team, so towards the end, we had no idea what the rest of us were doing but I think if we had used our time properly we could've done a lot better. During this project, I also learned more about growing plants and finding out more about the Martian soil through our own project and research. 

Lucas:  I learned that it is difficult to find plants that will grow in martian soil and that it takes a long time and can be hard to manage the plants.

Haya: