Mars: Back to Earth's Future
WAC Workshop July 29, 2015
NM Museum of Natural History & Science
Goals: to provide planetarians, Science-on-a-Sphere presenters, and other informal science educators with
- a deeper understanding of the planetary processes on Mars (geology, atmosphere, climate, and habitability) and how they’ve changed over time, and what this tells us about Earth and its future
- a deeper understanding of how we are studying these processes, gathering data on a variety of missions, specifically focusing on the Rovers and on MAVEN
- Access to visuals and other resources that they can incorporate into their programs, and implementation discussions to generate ideas for both participants and presenters on how to implement these and what else is needed by the audience
Presentations
- Dr. Larry Crumpler, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science “A Decade of Water Prospecting on Mars: Mars Exploration Rovers” (98 Meg)
- Dr. Horton Newsom, University of New Mexico, “Curiosity: Results from the Mars Science Laboratory”
- Dr. Dave Brain, LASP, “What Happened to the Ancient Martian Atmosphere?”
- Invisible Mars This program was developed for DigitalSky2 by Toshi Komatsu @ The Lawrence Hall of Science/UC Berkeley. It is based on a Science On a Sphere(R) program, developed by the NASA MAVEN Education and Public Outreach team. The presenter script is included in the media assets for the show.
Workshop Activities
Planetary Magnetism: Demonstration of Mars’ magnetic fieldsTeacher guide
Student guide
Students experiment with a simple model of a planet surface, its atmosphere, and the Sun’s magnetic field. Ultimately they discover that the underlying magnetic field protects charged particles in the atmosphere from being carried away by the Sun’s magnetic field.
MAVEN Educator Ambassador Lessons and Interactives
LASP has developed new lessons and video interactives that are targeted toward a middle school audience, including Planet Designer, in which audiences change features of the planet to explore the effects on the planet’s temperature and habitability.
Mars Match Game
Students explore similarities and differences between Earth and Mars by matching satellite images of similar features. We used this activity as an opening engagement; each participant received a separate image and had to find someone with one that matched.
A Sample from Mars
Students examine a soil sample to observe characteristics, classify materials, infer causes, and draw conclusions.
Design Your Mission Patch
Students work in teams to design a mission patch, incorporating mission type, destination, goals, objectives, and name into the design.
Edible Rover
Students design and build an edible model of the MER rover.
Resources
Invisible Mars script and datasets for Presentation
The Invisible Mars script and all of the materials you will need to run the Science on a Sphere program at your own installation can be downloaded here.
NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio: MAVEN Videos
Contains a variety of videos about the mission, Mars’ evolving climate, and more, in particular:
NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio: Mars Gallery
Contains a variety of videos about Mars, in particular:
- http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11796 contains a number of animations at the bottom of the page, of Mars present-day to 4.5 billion years ago, of ancient oceans retreating to the ice caps of Mars, and of hydrogen atoms escaping Mars’ upper atmosphere.
NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio: 4k Animation
NASA Goddard animators are just starting to deliver content in the Ultra-HD 4k format. Their first big product is a video on the formation of the solar system and asteroid Bennu (the target for the OSIRIS-REx mission). Here are a couple of links to download the “Bennu’s Journey” animations in full 4k.
Video: Questions for MAVEN Mission to Mars
Mars presents intriguing questions to scientists: How did the Red Planet become so desolate? Did Mars once look like Earth? How has it changed? is exploring the planet's atmosphere in search of answers.
Video: So you want to build a Spacecraft?
Using the MAVEN mission as an example, this video describes the steps a proposed mission must go through before construction even begins.
NASA 3D Resources
Many of the spacecraft models and other objects are available for download. MAVEN is not on the page yet, but they intend to post models of MAVEN and other Goddard spacecraft soon. Dan Gallagher will check about elevation data for Mars as well. Here are the links to the 3D resources page.
Contacts
Nancy Alima Ali
Multiverse, Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley; presented Mars magnetic field model
Jayne Aubele
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science; presented several Mars hands-on activities
David Brain, Ph.D.
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences
University of Colorado Boulder; gave virtual presentation about MAVEN
Larry Crumpler, Ph.D.
Research Curator in Volcanology and Space Sciences
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science; gave presentation about Spirit and Opportunity rovers
Dan Gallagher
NASA Goddard Multimedia Producer; joined teleconference about planetarium visualizations
Toshi Komatsu
Director of Digital Theaters
The Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley; gave live MAVEN planetarium show
Tom Mason
MAVEN Education and Communication Specialist; joined teleconference about planetarium visualizations
Horton E. Newsom
Institute of Meteoritics and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
University of New Mexico; gave presentation about Curiosity rover
Christine Shupla
Lunar and Planetary Institute; facilitated workshop
Other Mars Resources and Activities
(Not shared during the workshop)
Making Tracks on Mars
This Teacher Resource and Activity Guide by Jayne Aubele and others contains background on the Mars Exploration Rovers and 20 related educational activities.
Mars Science Lab handout
A variety of websites with more information about Curiosity, compiled by Beth Ha at UNM
Dawn Mission handout
A variety of websites with more information about Ceres, Vesta, and the Dawn mission, compiled by Beth Ha at UNM
Explore! Mars Inside and Out
These hands-on activities are geared for children ages 8-13 in an informal science education environment, with a focus on Mars’ surface geology and what it tells us about Mars’ interior. Background information, powerpoints, and more are available.
Life on Mars?
These hands-on activities introduce children to and engage them in the science of life in the universe (i.e., astrobiology) and Mars. They were designed for 8 to 13 year olds with special consideration toward effectively engaging girls in science. Background information, powerpoints, and more are available.
Mars Education Program
Fun, inexpensive, hands-on, easy to do classroom activities to help increase your students' background on Mars and space science. The 24 activities range in grade level from K to 12.
Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science at Johnson Space Center
Learn all about meteorites, our Moon, Mars, and the search for life. Classroom materials, lesson plans, and more.
Exploring Planets in the Classroom - Hands-on Activities
This site contains over 25 hands-on activity lesson plans for educators. The materials are vetted by space scientists and span topics from general solar system to volcanology to Mars and the Moon.
Google Mars
Explore the features on Mars.
NASA’s Mars Exploration Program
Mars Exploration Rovers
Website with the latest information about the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, their discoveries over their extended mission, and supporting activities.
Malin Space Science Systems—Images from Mars
Includes images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (due to arrive in March 2006), Mars Global Surveyor’s Orbiter Camera, and Viking Orbiters.
Mars 2001 Odyssey THEMIS
(Thermal Emission Imaging System)—infrared images of Mars’ surface.
Phoenix Mars Lander
The Phoenix Mission will landed on Mars' icy polar plains in May 2008 and analyzed the volatiles in the soil and searched for complex organic molecules in the soil, evaluating the regions habitability.
Year of the Solar System
This site includes a variety of monthly topics (such as impacts, volcanism, scale) and provides a variety of activities, information, resources, and event opportunities for each. There is also a location where visitors can add information about their own events.
Be a Martian
Be a Martian enables the public to participate as citizen scientists to assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet, as well as learn about the planet in general.
Mars Society Official Website
This site provides Mars conference and convention schedules along with the latest articles, information and news pertaining to the Red planet. Includes Mars picture of the day.
International MarsWatch
This site is for both amateur and professional astronomers. Here you will find images of Mars, tools to aid you in planning your own Mars observations, current and past issues of the International Mars Watch Electronic Newsletter, and links to other Mars-relevant sites on the Internet.
Red Planet Report
The Red Planet Report scans the published scientific literature on Mars and gives you short summaries of the most interesting results, written so you can understand what they mean. If you’re interested in Mars research, but don’t have the time to plow through journals and papers to find new results, they’ll do it for you.
Mars Daily
This site contains the latest news and information pertaining to Mars along with other general space news.
Mars Quest Online
On this site you can launch an interactive spacecraft to Mars, explore its volcanoes and canyons, solve mysteries about the search for life on Mars and explore the latest rover images.
Allan's Mars Maps Page
Mars Maps from “General Information” section: A compilation of different maps (in Hemisphere and Mercator projections) of general properties of Mars in consistent sizes and format. Clicking on the thumbnail image of each map will display it at ~ 2 pixels per degree, a fast download. Each description has links to any higher-resolution images that are currently available.
NASA’s Solar System Exploration Forum
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/
Provides the latest on missions (past/present/future) with images and releases, as well as up-to-date background information about our planetary bodies and moons. The education link includes materials, lesson plans, and resources for children and educators.
The Planetary Photojournal
Provides excellent images of the bodies of our Solar System; images are searchable by target, by mission, and by instrument.
Mars Through Time
Resources, presentations, maps, and activities related to Mars exploration, from a 2014 workshop for high school science teachers.
Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP)
Teams of students in grades 5 through college sophomore level work with scientists, mission planners and educators on the THEMIS team to image a site on Mars using the THEMIS visible wavelength camera onboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.