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To MARS with MER - Interact
LIVE FROM MARS Program 1
Countdown
Live Tuesday, November 19, 1996, 13:00-14:00 Eastern
Sites: Cape Canaveral, FL, and Worcester, MA
A draft script of this program is available in three parts:
part 1,
part 2 and
part 3.
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 eventually 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
topographic 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), cleanliness and non-
contamination measures allow. Participants in Live From Mars will be among
the last humans to see Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover before it leaves
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.
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 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 "Hcanals", 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
on-line components and its collaborative project, "The Planet Explorer
Toolkit," will be provided.