A Trip to MARS: Ben Corbin of Shalimar Travels to Utah to Experience a Real-Life Simulation of Exploring the Red Planet

By Angie Toole

Since he was a little boy, Ben Corbin of Shalimar has dreamed of a future in space, of traveling to Mars and exploring other planets.

In December, the junior at the University of Central Florida got to experience something like that, a sort of real-life simulation in the mountains of Utah.

Corbin was part of a group who traveled to the Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah, to conduct exploration operations under the same style and many of the same restraints as they would on the Red Planet.

That means if they went outdoors, they went in spacesuits. Mission members find out how cumbersome and difficult it is to do fieldwork, like collecting samples and taking notes, while lumbering around in the bulky suits.

The Mars Society and NASA maintain the station, which is staffed by volunteers in twoweek rotations, each charged with missions that mimic the real thing.

The project is expected to help in designing real stations on the moon and Mars, and gather data on how people interact under unusual conditions.

Corbin served as the engineer for his tour of duty, from Dec. 10-22, 2006.

Their mission: to help develop the Spaceward Bound curriculum for training future explorers at the site and studying area terrain.

Corbin is still pumped from the experience. He cites a blog he kept as a sort of virtual diary of the experience at http://benacor.blogspot.com/

"I’m still amazed at all the things I’ve learned how to do and all the work we’re done," he wrote early on in the mission. "I never thought I’d be running the power systems and facilitating the use of a natural water purifying system that should be able to turn used water clean again with no added chemicals.

"It’s also hard to believe I’m even here, on a NASA sponsored vacation where I get to ride ATVs and wear spacesuits, while in return all I have to do is mark some waypoints, do a few reports, and of course fix everything that breaks," he added "Even though everything breaks, I learn something new every single time, and I

can take that knowledge back with me. It’s sad how engineering classes teach you nothing about the application of engineering principles, only the theory behind it all. I’m thankful for everything I can gain from the experience."

He had a pretty good background already. Most recently, Corbin attended the United Nation’s Space Generation Congress in Valencia, Spain.

He’s an aerospace engineering major at UCF, minoring in math, physics, space studies and astronomy. He’s a member of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. He earned his private pilot’s license and plans to earn his instrument rating.

At UCF, Corbin is doing research on the Flamespeed Project, measuring temperature, pressure and speed at which pressurized gases inite and propogate.