Missions to Mars.After months of travel, two NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration.NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. rovers have landed and begun exploration of the Red Planet. Here on Earth, educators are creating adventures for students to embark on some Mars expeditions of their own. There's the Mars Student Imaging Project. Teams of students in grades five and up are working with scientists, mission planners and educators from Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility The Mars Space Flight Facility is located at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. The facility is a research center in Arizona State University's School for Earth and Space Exploration and specializes in remote sensing research primarily concerning the planet Mars. to image a site on Mars using a visible wavelength camera. The camera is aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. Meanwhile, the Mars rovers A Mars rover is an unmanned rover used for exploration of the planet Mars. They are deployed because it has so far been too costly and difficult to achieve a manned mission to Mars, and because probes and satellites are too limited (due to their immobility or their distance from are helping to promote robotics. Fairbanks (Ala.) North Star Borough School District, for example, recently held a Lego League tournament featuring an obstacle course obstacle course n. 1. A training course filled with obstacles, such as ditches and walls, that must be negotiated speedily by troops undergoing training or participants in an obstacle race. 2. based on the Martian landscape. Student teams created working robots using computers and Lego parts, and then designed their own mission plans for conducting experiments and collecting and analyzing data. The winning team went on to win a state event and will represent Alaska at a national tournament next month, says organizer Morgan Gray, a teacher at Tanana Middle School. Dan Barstow, director of the Center for Earth and Space Science Education at the nonprofit organization Nonprofit Organization An association that is given tax-free status. Donations to a non-profit organization are often tax deductible as well. Notes: Examples of non-profit organizations are charities, hospitals and schools. TERC TERC Telomerase RNA Component TERC Total Environmental Restoration Contract TERC Technology Education Research Center TERC Turbine Engine Research Center TERC Technical Education Resource Center TERC Tribal Emergency Planning Committee , says that "at some point every year, every student should have some kind of engaging experience doing science. Right now this Mars story is a wonderful opportunity for doing that." TERC's MarsQuest Online Web site, www.marsquestonline.org was developed in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. and includes interactive activities and a live image feed from the Mars rovers. Educators' interest in covering Mars tends to peak whenever NASA is successful in discovering something new, Barstow explains. "What we understand about Mars certainly relates to what we know about Earth," he says, adding that NASA's Web site got mole than a billion hits within a few days of the first rover landing. "It is clearly engaging the public. Kids are naturally excited about it." www.nasa.gov |
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