From: jwee@mail.arc.nasa.gov (Jan Wee)
Subject: Live From Mars Teacher's Guide Preview: Program One
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 1996 15:18:09 -0500
Dear discuss-lfm members, Here is the description of Program One which will be included in our LFM Teacher's Guide, presented her for your preview. Jan Wee ------------------------------------------------------------- Live From Mars, Program 1, "Countdown" Live Tuesday, November 19, 1996, 13:00-14:00 Eastern Sites: Cape Canaveral, FL, and Worcester, MA "Countdown" will take students, live, behind the scenes at Cape Canaveral, launch site for the entire American space program. It will also visit Worcester, Massachusetts, where in the last years of the 19th Century, the young Robert Goddard first dreamt of space flight, and then went on to invent the rockets that would take humans into space and robots to Mars. "Countdown" will document the final intense hours before launch. We'll see Mars Global Surveyor lift off and the beginning of its 9-month journey. Archival footage and NASA animation provide background: the planning and design of both spacecraft and Mission, what Surveyor is supposed to do, and how its instruments will create the first detailed global map of Mars. Pathfinder, the second of the two Mars-bound spaceships, will be in final prep for a December launch. Live scenes will take viewers as close to the rocket as safety (the spacecraft will be fueled) and cleanliness and non- contamination measures allow. Participants in Live From Mars will be among the last humans to see Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover down here on Earth. Then on July 4, 1997, they can be among the first to see it "wake up" on Mars. Students in Massachusetts and Florida will interact with members of the Pathfinder and Surveyor teams, via live 2-way video. E-mail will allow students, anywhere, to participate. Taped questions from schools around America will add other voices and locations. Students will also give their peers a first-person, kids' eye tour of the Cape, including the places from which humans went to the Moon. The program will also consider why we should travel to Mars and how Earth and Mars are alike and different. It will review the latest information on Earth's neighbor, including the very hot topic of possible life on the Red Planet. Viewers will see how liquid water was almost certainly once present on Mars. Activity 1.3, "Follow the Water", will be demonstrated by students on camera, providing teachers with a model,and other students with motivation for their own hands-on work. "Countdown" will provide the best images of Mars from orbit, while it reviews previous American missions and their achievements. Viking images will show the mighty volcanoes, the great Valles Marineris canyon system, and the channels. Students will see how those channels were once regarded as "canals", fueling speculation about past alien civilizations on Mars. The program will show how students can extend their Martian adventure and stay connected via the Internet. Details of Live From Mars online components and its collaborative project, The Planet Explorer Toolkit, will be provided.