Time Capsule to Mars Announces Partnership with Savannah College of Art & Design
DURHAM, NC – May 11, 2015 – An undergraduate team of eight students is boldly taking the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) where it has never gone before — to Mars, as an official university partner within the Time Capsule to Mars™ (TC2M) network. The SCAD team will lead the creative vision for TC2M’s brand, develop graphic design elements for communication, and create the digital media tools and content for the mission.
TC2M, an Explore Mars BE BOLD Technical Project, is a student-led project that is designing, building, launching, and landing the first privately-funded mission to Mars by 2018. Undergraduate and graduate teams from across the United States are on board, and technical development is well underway. The spacecraft will carry digital content uploaded by individuals from around the world for a small fee. That content will be sent to Mars for future human explorers to recover.
“We really want every aspect of this mission to be led and developed by students,” said Rohit Ray, TC2M’s Business Director and an MBA student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “Bringing SCAD on board has filled a critical need for the mission, and we’re truly lucky to have such passionate, talented, and capable students joining our efforts.”
The student team at SCAD has begun work on web content that will be used for donor and consumer outreach. The team is addressing an overhaul of www.timecapsuletomars.com, a crowdfunding campaign video, and other content within the project’s integrated marketing strategy. SCAD will also be leading the design and optimization of the mission’s user experience.
“The SCAD Student Team is extremely excited to join Time Capsule to Mars,” said Andres Santanilla, a senior at SCAD and the TC2M Lead Designer. “As a team we consider this a great chance to not only learn and build our skillsets, but also a great opportunity to collaborate with very talented students from other fields and schools.”
Students involved in the project at SCAD come from a variety of different majors, including graphic design, industrial design, interaction design, service design, and film & television. Throughout the mission, new students will come on board as others graduate.
“This is an inspirational project for our school that allows our students to practice their skills on their way to market-facing jobs,” said Owen Foster, the Chair for Industrial Design at SCAD. “Over the course of the mission, we will build the TC2M team’s objectives into our coursework and extracurriculars so that as many students can take part as possible.”
The team will be advised and mentored by SCAD’s Foster and by Diane Meier, the owner of MEIER & Co, an award-winning integrated marketing firm in New York City.
“I am honored to be of any service to these talented and committed young people – both at SCAD and TC2M,” said Meier. “The Future now has a fresh new face for so many of us who choose to share their journey.”
SCAD joins Duke University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, University of Colorado at Boulder, and University of Connecticut in bringing the mission to a successful landing in 2018.
About Time Capsule to Mars™
The world’s first student-led interplanetary mission, Time Capsule to Mars™ (TC2M), will design, launch and land intact a time capsule on Mars containing digital messages representing a snapshot of humanity on Earth. The mission will inspire today’s generation to commit to sending humans to Mars who will recover the capsule. TC2M intends to be one of the largest crowdfunded endeavors, aiming to raise $25 million. TC2M is a project of the non-profit Explore Mars, Inc. Read more about our mission here, follow us on Twitter @TimeCapsuleMars or #TC2M, and on Facebook.
About Explore Mars
Explore Mars was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars within the next two decades. To further that goal, Explore Mars conducts programs and technical challenges to stimulate the development and/or improvement of technologies that will make human Mars missions more efficient and feasible. In addition, to embed the idea of Mars as a habitable planet, Explore Mars challenges educators to use Mars in the classroom as a tool to teach standard STEM curricula. Explore Mars, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation organized in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
