NES Lesson-On the Moon Educator Guide

NES Professional Development Web Seminar This Week

Engineering Design Process: On The Moon

Date: Jan. 29, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. EST
Audience: Educators of students in grades 6-8

This 90-minute Web seminar features two activities from NASA’s On the Moon Educator Guide: “On Target” and “Feel the Heat.” In this Web seminar participants will receive an overview of both activities and learn strategies for implementing them in the classroom. In “On Target,” students design and test a method of consistently delivering a payload to a designated target. In “Feel the Heat,” students use the engineering design process to build, test and improve a solar hot water heater. Register today!

NASA's GRAIL Mission Solves Mystery of Moon's Surface Gravity

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission has uncovered the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon’s gravity uneven, a phenomenon that affects the operations of lunar-orbiting spacecraft.

Because of GRAIL’s findings, spacecraft on missions to other celestial bodies can navigate with greater precision in the future.

GRAIL’s twin spacecraft studied the internal structure and composition of the moon in unprecedented detail for nine months. They pinpointed the locations of large, dense regions called mass concentrations, or mascons, which are characterized by strong gravitational pull. Mascons lurk beneath the lunar surface and cannot be seen by normal optical cameras.

This mission update is a great classroom extension to the NASA Explorer Schools featured lesson, Engineering Design Process: On The Moon. To have your students playing the role of engineers in designing lunar missions, access this set of engineering design challenges on the NES Virtual Campus.

To read more about GRAIL’s discovery, visit https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/news/grail20130530.html.

Professional Development Web Seminar: Engineering Design Process–On the Moon Educator Guide

Professional Development Web Seminar

As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences, the NASA Explorer Schools project and the National Science Teachers Association are hosting a 90-minute live professional development Web seminar on Feb. 13, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. EST. This seminar showcases two lessons from the “On the Moon” educator guide: “On Target” and “Feel the Heat.” Learn how to use the engineering design process to challenge students to solve problems related to exploring the moon. This session will fully prepare you to implement these activities in your classroom.

This is the last time during this school year that this Web seminar will be offered.

For more information and to register online, visit the NSTA Learning Center.

Professional Development Web Seminar: Engineering Design Process: On The Moon Educator Guide

Professional development opportunity

NASA Explorer Schools and the National Science Teachers Association are hosting a 90-minute live professional development Web seminar on Oct. 10, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. EDT for educators of grades 6-12. This seminar showcases two lessons from the “On the Moon” educator guide: “On Target” and “Feel the Heat”. Learn how to use the engineering design process to challenge students to solve problems related to exploring the moon. This session will fully prepare you to implement these activities in your classroom.

For more information and to register online, visit the seminar registration page.

(This seminar will be repeated on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013.)

Researchers Estimate Ice Content of Crater at Moon's South Pole

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned data indicating ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon’s south pole.

  The team of NASA and university scientists using laser light from LRO’s laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater. They found the crater’s floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of ice. This information will help researchers understand crater formation and study other uncharted areas of the moon. The findings are published in the journal Nature.

To read more about ice on the moon, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/crater-ice.html.

This story features the lunar exploration mission LRO and is directly related to NASA Now: Lunar Mathematics and Mapping, as well as the NASA Explorer Schools featured lesson “Engineering Design Process: On the Moon.” To view this edition of NASA Now or to use this lesson in your classroom, visit: http://explorerschools.nasa.gov.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.

Fourth Grade Students Request and Receive GRAIL Moon Image

One of two NASA spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed back the first student-requested pictures of the lunar surface from its onboard camera. Fourth grade students from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., received the honor of making the first image selections by winning a nationwide competition to rename the two spacecraft.

To read more about this student opportunity and see the image, visit the NASA feature story page. This story details an opportunity NASA opened to students to rename two spacecraft and of students getting involved in moon research serves as an excellent extension to the NASA Explorer Schools featured lesson, Engineering Design Process: On the Moon. Be sure to share this with your students who have completed this activity. To access this lesson, visit the NES Virtual Campus.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.

An Idea for a Lunar Rover Project

Patricia Smeyers, a teacher from Secaucus Board of Education, has a great idea for a Lunar Rover Project. Students design a new lunar rover for the future. They create their designs using cloud-based 3-D modeling software and present their engineered 3-D model and research.

The students used an online educational collaborative website to create their presentation and used a wikispace to house their projects.

This activity reinforces the best practice — use of technology to facilitate student collaboration — while incorporating NES materials and NASA opportunities.

Read the article in NEON to find out about specific websites and programs supporting the educational goals of this project.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.

LRO Releases Final Set of Exploration Data

Far side of the moon NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team released the final set of data from the mission’s exploration phase along with the first measurements from its new life as a science satellite.

With this fifth release of data, striking new images and maps have been added to the already comprehensive collection of raw lunar data and high-level products, including mosaic images, that LRO made possible. The spacecraft’s seven instruments delivered more than 192 terabytes of data with an unprecedented level of detail. It would take approximately 41,000 typical DVDs to hold the new LRO data set.

Read the NEON article to learn more about how LRO has given us the best view of the moon we’ve ever had and how to incorporate the LRO mission into the activities in NASA Explorer Schools’ On the Moon Educator Guide teaching modules.

Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.