Classroom Robotics: MISSION TO MARS: students build Mars rovers

“HENRYVILLE — NASA’s latest mission to Mars is providing a unique
experience for Henryville High School students to learn about what it
takes to make a rover successful on the red planet, which educators say
they hope can help inspire students toward future careers.

Students
in teacher Donna Gatza’s Biology classes are spending seven weeks of
their 18-week semester on a series of projects related to the Mars rover
Perseverance, which launched July 30 and landed Feb. 21 in the Jezero
Crater on Mars. The mission’s aim is to seek signs of ancient life and
collect rock and soil samples, potentially to take back to Earth.

“NASA
has provided all kinds of incredible activities for the kids to learn
hands-on, to be exposed to different careers, to be experienced to
different things,” Gatza said. “Until this happened, how many people
knew there was a thing called Astrobiology? It’s important to get the
kids excited about something and out of their books.”

The
lesson plans and activities have included students building their own
rovers. Working in teams, they selected the size and type of materials
(made from dried pasta) based on their budget, then designed and built
the rovers using an app on their Chromebooks.

“[They] had to pick a
launch system, there was budget in this and everything has a cost,” the
teacher said. “So they had to design their entire mission based on what
they had a budget for. And then there were some funky things like they
missed a launch date, the government cut their funding — the things that
really happen.”

Read the full article at its source: https://www.newsandtribune.com/news/mission-to-mars-henryville-students-build-mars-rovers/article_b2905a4e-88df-11eb-ab26-5f74825e284f.html