Education Plan: Sample Handling
An important part of the Perseverance Mars rover mission is to collect and store rock samples for future missions to retrieve and eventually return to Earth. Aaron Yazzie, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks about his job on the Perseverance Mars rover mission and how the rover will collect and store samples on the Red Planet. Watch en Español: Seleccione subtítulos en Español bajo el ícono de configuración.
Mission This Week
One of the most challenging parts of the Perseverance rover mission is collecting samples of Mars rocks and soil, placing those samples into tubes, and leaving them strategically on the surface, where they could eventually be collected and returned to Earth by a future mission.
This week, students learn how we sample rocks on Mars and package these samples for return to Earth sometime in the future. Students can also consider how a future mission might collect these samples by programming a video game to do just that. This week is especially fun for students because they’ll be thinking about doing something NASA has never done before – bringing samples from Mars to Earth.
Tips This Week
For younger students, use play dough to pre-build a rock for them to core and investigate.
Encourage students to keep up with NASA's Mars exploration as we continue to learn more about the Red Planet.
Whether you decided to embark on the full challenge or just a component or two, you can celebrate your students' achievement with a certificate of participation! See the links below to download a personalizable certificate.
This Week's Education Resources
Use these STEM lesson plans, projects, videos, and articles to get students learning how Perseverance collects and studies samples. Lessons and projects are standards-aligned. These assignments can be done in any order and in part or in full as schedules allow.
