NASA Notes

The following information was extracted from the *NASA Educational Web Page (Link)

Mars Rover Project
The National Science Foundation and NASA are also sponsoring a Mars Rover Project for students and teachers throughout the US. The activities in the project are:

Looking up an appropriate landing site for the rover. (Engineers have their ideas, scientists have theirs:-)
Choose landing site and create a model of it on an 8 x 8 plywood board using paper mache and chicken wire.
Build an appropriate robot that can travel on the terrain (K-nex, Parallax, or Lego work fine). Test, Test, Test the rover to determine its capabilities.
Learn about image processing and test cameras on rover. We are starting to use X-10 cameras on board the rovers. They are RF controlled and cheap. We use NIH image software. This software is free from the National Institute of Health.
Send the rover to another class's site to determine the characteristics of the remote site.
Celebrate the accomplishment of your mission with your host site.

If you are an upper elementary or middle school teacher and want more information about trainings this summer please email Nancy McIntyre, at CIOTACH51@aol.com. She will get you on a list for more information about Mars and the Rover Project.

If you just want to see a cool animation of the Mission go to http://athena.cornell.edu/the_mission/rov_video.html. The mission is broken into three pieces, Launch, Landing and Rover. Be sure to see all three.

Below are some of the sites that are used in the Mars Rover Projects activities. Take a look and if you would like more information contact Nancy, CIOTACH51@aol.com.

For choosing a landing site here is a cool interactive page that allows you to look at data from the landing area and discussions with the scientists and engineers who are deciding: The Great Mars Debate. A discussion with the decision makers:
http://quest.nasa.gov/sso/events/mars/marsdebate/videos.html

This is a cool site but takes some getting used to. It will bring up different data maps for the landing site. The pop-up is your key so be sure it is visible when you look at the data sets.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmars/activities.html

An Educational Brief on why we study Mars. At the bottom are activities.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmars/edbrief/edbrief.html

Other Classroom activities
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmars/activities.html

Some cute game sites:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/funzone.html
http://www.geocities.com/sgraham481/rover.htm

Also the Venus in a Box can be Mars in a box. You can find the student and teacher instructions at the bottom of the page:
http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/educators/lp5-12.html

*NOTE - Applied Technologies and the Mars Exploration Rover kit are in no way affiliated with the National Aeronautics Space Administration, and the kit is not endorsed by NASA or any other government agency or employee.