Education Plan: Plan Your Mission
Elizabeth Cordoba, a payload systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks about her job on the Perseverance Mars rover mission and some of the important factors to consider when planning a mission to the Red Planet. Watch en Español: Seleccione subtítulos en Español bajo el ícono de configuración.
Mission This Week
Now that we have some knowledge about our destination, it’s time to plan our mission to Mars. We need to plan for a long trip, determine which power source we’ll use, select science instruments that will help us accomplish our goals, make sure everything will fit on the rocket, and stay under budget! Here’s Elizabeth Cordoba, a payload systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with some expert advice about how NASA plans missions to Mars.
Tips This Week
Planning a mission involves deciding what science you'll do when you get there, balancing budgets, and choosing the best technology and power systems for your spacecraft. This week’s lessons get younger students thinking about locomotion and tools they might put on a Mars robot, while older students, in grades 3 and up, can play a mission-planning board game. If you’re teaching remotely, you can still play the game together as a class!
Students will also want to think about how they're going to get their spacecraft to its destination, when it will need to launch, and where it will land when it gets to its destination. Traveling to Mars can take anywhere from six to nine months, depending on when you launch and the mass of your spacecraft. High-school students can do the actual calculations to determine the next best opportunity to launch to Mars!
This Week's Education Resources
Use these STEM lesson plans, projects, videos, and articles to get students learning about what it takes to plan a mission to Mars. Lessons and projects are aligned to NGSS and Common Core Math standards. These assignments can be done in any order and in part or in full as schedules allow.
