From: jwee@mail.arc.nasa.gov (Jan Wee)
Subject: LFM Teacher's Guide Preview: Dear Educator
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 1996 15:08:04 -0500
Dear discuss-lfm members, Here is the first of several files which will serve as a preview of the Live From Mars Teacher's Guide as explained in my previous posting. Jan Wee -------------------------------------------------------- Passport to Knowledge electronic field trips to scientific frontiers via interactive television and online networks make possible, in part, by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and public television Dear Educator, Get ready for the trip of a lifetime, not on some artificial thrill ride in theme park, but traveling along -- virtually -- with two NASA missions to Mars. Through live video and the Internet it will feel as if you and your students are looking out from the deck of the Santa Maria, as Columbus sees a new continent heave into view. But this will be a whole new planet, one much like Earth in some ways, in others very different, and one where we're beginning to find out, life may have once begun. On July 4, 1997, after an 8-month journey, an alien object will streak through Mars' dark sky, glowing bright as its heat shield encounters the planet's thin atmosphere. Decelerating in just CHECK seconds from CHECK km. per hour to a landing velocity of CHECK, a new type of airbag will deploy. The spacecraft will hit the surface, bounce as high as a CHECK story building, and tumble over rocks and boulders whose potential to destroy the spacecraft no-one knows for sure. After this bumpy landing, the airbags will deflate, 3 petals will unfold, and Mars Pathfinder will awaken on the Red Planet. Within hours, the first new images from the Martian surface in over 20 years will be radioed back to Earth. A few more hours, and a micro-rover, Sojourner, will roll away from the lander to begin a mission designed to sample rocks and characterize the Martian soil in ways never done before. All this for $150 million, the price of a couple of modestly-budgeted science fiction movies! Two months later Mars Global Surveyor arrives. It will then begin a complex series of maneuvers, using Mars' atmosphere to gradually lower itself into a mapping orbit: like many aspects of Pathfinder, this aero-braking also has never been done before, and the mission teams down here on Earth include key managers just years out of graduate school, looking more like game designers from MultiMedia Gulch or Silicon Valley software gurus rather than the cliched image of rocket scientists. If this all sounds pretty risky, it is. Pathfinder and Surveyor are part of a new NASA design philosophy and exploration strategy: build more, smaller, cheaper spacecraft. and launch them to Mars every two years. It's designed to allow for failures (though everyone works to minimize these) and to permit young researchers to fly many missions in their professional careers, rather than devoting a lifetime to just one or two mega-missions. Live from Mars, the electronic field trip described in this Teacher's Guide, is also unique, innovative -- and somewhat risky. But just like NASA's new Mars missions, the upside should be unusually rewarding. * Through Live from Mars your students will be exposed to cutting- edge science, more current than found in any textbook. * They'll go behind the scenes at some of the most interesting places on Earth, sites which are humanity's literal and metaphorical launch-pads to the Universe beyond our home planet. * They'll meet the men and women who operate the spacecraft and analyze the new data that will return. * They'll see careers they may never have heard of before, but which may provide them with a door to a productive personal future. * They'll have a chance to use the Internet to communicate with some of the world's foremost researchers, and also to collect and share data with fellow-students. The purpose of this Guide is to give you and your students the keys to unlocking this rare opportunity. It's organized to provide you with an easy-to-use pathway through the rich multimedia materials every Passport to Knowledge project provides. But this time we've tried to make it even simpler to see how the video, online and hands-on components of the project work together. Evaluation of our previous projects has shown that teachers who use all three media get more from the project, and feel their students benefit accordingly. And this time we're asking you to work with us more closely to assess student learning outcomes in new ways appropriate to this new kind of learning experience. This is an interactive project through and through, and as you read on you'll find out how to communicate with Live from Mars. We hope you and your students learn a lot and also have great fun. Remember, something you say in class, or something a student may read online, or see during the videos, may be the seed which will transport that youngster, two decades or so from now, to be the first human on Mars and literally, not virtually, see a new land come into view. We're glad to have you with us. Now, Onwards and Upwards, to Mars! Sincerely, Erna Akuginow Geoffrey Haines-Stiles Executive Producer Project Director