Mission to Mars

As the NASA astronauts on board Artemis II circumnavigated the moon this month, sixth grade scientists had their sights set on Mars. After learning about the solar system this fall, and designing spacesuits that can withstand the temperature variations of space travel, sixth graders designed, constructed, and built their own Mars landers and rovers. The goal of the design challenge is to construct a lander that will enable its occupant, a fragile eggstronaut, to survive impact and also transport its payload the greatest distance upon reaching the red planet. The project culminated in students testing their landers and rovers in Harlow Gymnasium to determine whether they could safely land at a designated landing site and move the payload with their rovers. 

      To prepare for their mission, the sixth graders learned about some of the strategies NASA engineers use to protect rocket payloads, which can include humans, equipment, and supplies. Students learned about reducing impact velocity, using restraints, cushioning, and crumple zones. They also learned about the history of some NASA payload missions, including Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. Sixth grade science teacher Adel Collins split her students into groups, and within each team, there were lander and rover design groups. Each team could purchase building supplies, including cardboard, plastic bags, duct tape, straws, tissue paper, and string, with a budget that required them to be thoughtful about their use of materials. 

Teams sketched initial prototypes, created a materials budget, and finalized their design plan before building. As they built, Adel encouraged the students to consider how physics would affect their design, including inertia, gravity, and air resistance. To test their designs, students dropped their landers from the second floor of Harlow Gymnasium (approximately 18 feet above the gym floor) onto a hula-hoop landing site measuring approximately 1 square meter on the gym floor below. Students gathered around the landing site, counting down and cheering as each lander was released. While some of the eggs survived, others were cracked and scrambled. The exercise also highlighted the difficulty of precisely hitting the target landing sites, with several groups experiencing frustration as their lander floated or fell to rest outside the landing zone. Next, the rovers were removed from the lander and tested on a ramp to see how far they could travel. Returning to the classroom, students watched a video of the launch of the Artemis II mission before reflecting on their work, analyzing the best features of their design, and the scientific concepts that influenced it. They completed a full mission debrief, describing the specific challenges encountered, the successes achieved, and what they would change on a future mission.