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Spotlite Design Challenge:

Virtual Mission: Destination Mars

Developed in Collaboration with Challenger Center

Register

Register your learner production teams to receive a Spotlite Design Challenge starter kit with certificates and badges.

For teams who have successfully completed Challenger Center’s Virtual Mission: Destination Mars, congratulations! To learn more about how to book a Destination Mars experience, please visit the Challenger Center Virtual Missions. The Destination Mars Spotlite Challenge is also open to ALL teams, whether or not you participated in Challenger Center’s Virtual Mission.

Identify the problem: Your task is to share what you learn to help others change what they think about one of two misconceptions. You will do this by producing a NASA Spotlite video that will engage students in doing activities that can help change their misconception.

Follow these steps to think and act like scientists as you dig through data and experiment to support a claim that confronts a misconception.

  1. Select the MISCONCEPTION you will investigate.
  2. Do your own RESEARCH by conducting investigations to gather data and collect evidence to refute or disprove that misconception.
    Demonstration and Experimenting Ideas
    • WETA - Reading Rockets Activity 1: Why Is Mars Red? (Lab Instructions).
      Visit Resource
    • American Chemical Society - Rust - the Crust That Makes Stuff Bust (Lab Instructions)
      Visit Resource
    Science Information Links
    1. NASA Space Place All About Mars
      https://www.space.com
    2. NASA Mars Exploration Program: Mars Facts
      https://mars.nasa.gov
    3. Space.com, Why is Mars Red?
      https://www.space.com
    4. NASA Science Mars Exploration Program → The Red Planet → Geology
      https://mars.nasa.gov
    Demonstration and Experimenting Ideas
    Science Information Links
    1. NASA Space Place How Many Moons?
      https://spaceplace.nasa.gov
    2. NASA eClips Our World: Moons in Our Solar System
      nasaeclips.arc.nasa.gov
    3. NASA Solar System Exploration: Mars Moons
      https://solarsystem.nasa.gov
    4. NASA Solar System Exploration: Moons
      https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/overview/

Once you have completed your research, create a Spotlite video to share your findings and challenge others to gather their own evidence to confront the misconception.

  1. Review the Criteria for the Spotlite video.
  2. Create the Spotlite video.