< Remote Sensing

Full Educator Guides

How to Teach These Units

Take a little time to prepare and get ready to teach. The pages linked below give you an easy-to-follow checklist and resources that get you prepared for facilitating PLANETS activities.

Get Ready to Teach PLANETS

Get Ready to Teach This Unit

8. Destination Mars: Choosing a Landing Site and Preparing for the Science Share-Out

Learners combine multiple data sets to choose a safe and scientifically interesting landing site for a Mars rover. They then prepare to share their findings with the whole group and with invited guests.

Guiding Question

Which landing site on Mars do we recommend, and why?

Activity Downloads

Activity Timing

10 MIN. Get Ready & Team Up

25 MIN. Choose a Landing Site and Prepare for the Share-Out

10 MIN. Reflect

45 MIN. TOTAL

Setup: Prep Time 40 min

Several days in advance…

Send Science Share-Out Invitations to people from the community.

*See Materials & Preparation in the Educator Guide linked above for full info.

21st Century Skills

Communication

Science Practices

Interpreting Data
Constructing Explanations
Communicating Information

Learners Will Do

Choose a landing site that is scientifically interesting and safe.

Learners Will Know

Scientists must consider a lot of data to understand an area.

Connecting Across Activities

Activity 7: Using Spectroscopy to Understand Mars: Last time, learners interpreted spectra to identify the types of minerals at each of the different landing sites. These graphs are the third set of data they will use to choose a landing site.
Activity 8: Choosing a Landing Site and Preparing for the Science Share-Out: Today, they use the various kinds of data they have collected–landform images, topographic maps, and spectra–to choose a landing site.
Activity 9: Science Share-Out: Next time, they will share their findings.