Next week nearly 50 middle school students from El Paso, TX, will load charter buses and make the 18-hour trek to participate in summer camp at the Cosmosphere. This will be the tenth year students from Harold Wiggs Middle School have taken the trip and to honor the school’s history with the Cosmosphere, the participating eighth-grade campers decided to purchase a star for the memorial “Wall of Stars” outside the Justice Planetarium.
According to Oscar Navarrette, the student’s career and technology teacher who organizes the trip each year, the Cosmosphere camp experience provides unique opportunities to learn, but it also helps the students gain self-confidence and better understand how to work in teams.
Wiggs students who come to camp generally participate for two years. The first year the students attend Space 101, where (among other activities) they ride the 4-G centrifuge and launch model rockets. The following year, they attend Space 201 which is highlighted by a SCUBA diving excursion, to better understand the effects of weightlessness.
More information on Cosmosphere camps can be found at cosmo.org.
