This is an activity about planning a planetary mission. Learners will play a card game to design a mission to Mars. This game will allow them to experience the fundamentals of the engineering design process as they use collaboration and... (View More) problem-solving skills to develop a mission that meets constraints (budget, mass, power) and criteria (significant science return). This activity can introduce many activities in technology education, including robotics and rocketry. The lesson models scientific inquiry using the 5E instructional model and includes teacher notes, vocabulary, student journal and reading. (View Less)

This activity is about planetary rovers. Learners will simulate the challenges in communications that engineers face when driving a rover on Mars. They will particpate as part of a rover team to design and execute a series of commands that will... (View More) guide a rover made of people through an obstacle course simulating the Martian surface. Students will learn the limitations of operating a planetary rover and problem solving solutions by using this simulation. The lesson models the engineering design process using the 5E instructional model and includes teacher notes, vocabulary, student journal and reading. (View Less)

This is an activity about spacecraft design. Teams of learners will model how scientists and engineers design and build spacecraft to collect, store, and transmit data to earth. Teams will design a system to store and transmit topographic data of... (View More) the Moon and then analyze that data and compare it to data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter . (View Less)

Learners will construct a mock-up of planetary surface rover. They begin by exploring the importance of engineering in our society and work as a team to build a prototype of the team’s rover using student science notebooks and team sketches as a... (View More) guide. The lesson uses the 5E instructional model and includes: TEKS Details (Texas Standards alignment), Essential Question, Science Notebook, Vocabulary Definitions for Students, Vocabulary Definitions for Teachers, three Vocabulary Cards, and a Mini-Lesson. This is lesson 13 of the Mars Rover Celebration Unit, a six week long curriculum. (View Less)

This is a lesson about living on the Moon. Learners will use cooperative learning skills to design a self-sufficient lunar station.

This is a set of lessons about the Moon. Learners will focus on answering the essential question: What are the challenges engineers and scientists are working to solve as NASA prepares to send humans to live and work on the Moon for extended periods... (View More) of time? In order to understand the challenges NASA faces in returning humans to the Moon, and how these challenges can be overcome, learner groups will brainstorm the challenges of going back to the Moon. They will read what the experts have to say about these challenges, discuss their value and relevancy, debate the importance of the challenges, debrief as a class, and identify the most difficult challenges for returning humans to the Moon to live and work for extended periods of time. They will use skills in reading, interpretation, communication, and processing to interpret information, make inferences, and draw conclusions. (View Less)

This lesson is about the assembly of the Genesis collector arrays. Learners will work in teams to complete the assembly of the array frame that they began in the "Working Together" lesson (lesson 9 in the module). Includes a teacher's guide and... (View More) students handouts. This lesson is 10 of 10 from the module, titled Dynamic Design: The Cleanroom. (View Less)

This lesson is about the value of teamwork. Learners will model the assembly of the Genesis wafers onto the collector arrays by working in teams. Includes a teacher's guide and students handouts. Video and audio clips are provided. This lesson 9 of... (View More) 10 from the Dynamic Design: The Cleanroom module. (View Less)

This is a activity about applying the scientific method to a design challenge. Learners will design and build a platform that will be placed on a heat source. The platform is expected to serve as an insulator for a cube of gelatin. The goal is to... (View More) keep the inside temperature of the gelatin cube as cool as possible. Materials cost will vary, depending on materials chosen by group (within budget set by the teacher). Ties are made to the Mercury MESSENGER mission. Note: the student guide starts on p. 17 of the PDF. (View Less)