The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sends unmanned missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Their engineers have designed and built spacecrafts, landers, rovers, and probes that can travel great distances and send back data to help us better understand the universe.
Below are descriptions of five such marvels of engineering along with their pictures.
There's only one problem: They are all mixed up! Drag and drop the spacecrafts to match them with their description.
# These get dumped into the clue area of the game board
The InSight Mars Lander is designed to study the crust, mantle and core of Mars. Its seismometer can detect marsquakes and collect data that will help us learn about the formation of not only Mars but also other rocky planets like Mercury, Venus and Earth.
Learn more...
The Perseverance rover has a 7-ft long robotic arm with 3 joints and a drill for collecting rock and soil samples. Inside its belly sits a golden box that can conduct experiments on how oxygen can be generated on Mars for possible use by humans (and animals!) who visit Mars.
Learn more...
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is the first extra-terrestrial flying machine. It weighs only 4 lbs, light enough to be carried to Mars attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, but designed to be strong enough to lift off in Mars' thin atmosphere (<1% the density of Earth's)!
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The granddaddy of Martian rovers, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012. Using the tools and instruments on its robotic arm, it has discovered the evidence of ancient lakes on Mars as well as keys chemicals that are necessary for life: sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and carbon.
Learn more...
The Parker Solar Probe is the first space mission designed to "touch" the Sun. It will travel directly through the Sun's atmosphere (the corona) to study the origin and evolution of solar wind. It has a 4.5 inch thick carbon composite shield to protect it from the Sun's extreme heat of nearly 2,500℉!
Learn more...
In each round, you will see spots for 5 spacecraft. They are all mixed up!
Your job is to drag each spacecraft to its correct spot.
You did it! Good job!
We designed Mars Mission Control in collaboration with the University of North Texas with funding from NASA. Please take this brief survey to help further space education!
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