Carnival atmosphere ends HESTEC festivities

EDINBURG - The carnival's many smells wafted into the climate-controlled building and across the Martian landscape where curious children threw themselves in the path of a robot Saturday afternoon.

The eight-wheeled creature quickly climbed across the peaks and valleys formed by the row of bodies to the chuckle and applause of parents who waited more than an hour to see their children trampled by a former top-secret model of NASA's Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover.

"What we're doing is showing folks how to baby-sit kids on Mars," said JoJo Aguilar, a member of the Mars Exploration Team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Outside the Health and Physical Education Building II at the University of Texas Pan-American, hundreds thronged the sidewalk waiting to explore the space-themed exhibit while thousands rambled across the university's grounds for the final day of the seventh annual Hispanic Engineering, Science and Technology conference.

The educational conference's Community Day wrapped up the weeklong festivities with performances from hip-hop artists Baby Boy and C-Styles and a set from Grupo Pesado. UTPA alumnus and actor Valente Rodriguez, who had a recurring role on ABC's George Lopez sitcom, was the event's master of ceremonies.

Cesar Antonio Rebolledo, 5, braved the afternoon heat and the long line to experience the NASA exhibit, but what his family really drove from Los Fresnos for was Sue, the massive replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, explained the boy's father, Gilbert Martinez.

The model rover that crawled over Rebolledo was used by NASA to study how the Sojourner would move across the red planet before it landed on Mars on July 4, 1997, as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission.

Hundreds of food vendors lined the university's sidewalks loudly hawking everything from root beer floats to quesadillas.

Jesus Magaña, 22, sold tacos brimming with meat to support the UTPA chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The group had hawkers set up across campus pushing what Magaña boasted were the best tacos at the event.

For many HESTEC-goers, though, the highlight of the day was clearly the NASA exhibit where a model of the space agency's newest Mars rover was making its Texas debut. Dubbed the Mars Science Laboratory, the rover is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in fall 2009 and reach the red planet the following summer.

Unlike the previous rovers, the new one will not rely on the sun for power. An onboard generator is expected to supply the station with power for two years, said Curtis Wilkerson Jr., a quality control specialist with the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Across the floor, Al Herrera, an official with the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, recalled the delicate maneuvers Opportunity -another data-gathering Mars vehicle - performed.

Exhibit-goers donned 3-D goggles to immerse themselves in the spectacular images the rover captured of Mars' Burns Cliff - a photographic feat that presented a bit of a challenge for the robotic vehicle and its human overseers.

"As we tried to drive it would slip down the cliff," Herrera explained.