Designer & Developer | "A Day on Mars" VR Astronomical Educational Experience | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Aug 2020-Dec 2020
Team: Kexin Kang, Connor Wilson-Crumlish, and Sreya Vangara
Hey astronaut!
We’re very glad to see you leading humanity out here on Mars! Human beings have spent hundreds and thousands of years gazing out at the stars, wondering and guessing and imagining what was out there. On Earth, we are a lonely species, cursed with an innate intelligence invoking curiosity and wonder, but stuck on the ground. We’ve spent so long fighting with each other, and hurting our own planet, that we finally became abjectly terrified of ceasing to exist that we flung ourselves out into space. We created metal hunks of transistors and wires, that rove around other planets and swim deep into the expanse of space, not because they are independently intelligent, but because we made them like us. We made Curiosity to explore Mars, and Discovery to explore the solar system, and Spirit and Opportunity and Perseverance to take ourselves into the unknown. We gave them these names, so those who found them, would know what humanity was.
And now we have you, dear human. We have you, who has escaped the clutches of gravity and come to an alien planet: Mars. The path ahead of you is difficult, but you walk it with the support of all the human beings before you, who pointed up at the orange dot in the sky and wondered what it was and who was there. Exploration is in your blood, entwined in your DNA. Go forth, and wander.
