Can you survive on Mars?

Students investigate different challenges on a Mars base and design their own prototypes of robots that can help solve the challenges of living on Mars, such as the fact that it can be difficult to grow food, or that energy production can be unstable.

The themes that students work on are oxygen, energy, and food. For each of these themes, there is a video that introduces the challenges. After having seen the videos, the students work in groups to answer questions about each theme and start to design robot systems for a Mars base.

The focus of this activity is to get students to collaborate and to use creativity to solve problems. In addition, this activity demonstrates the great number of different types of professionals, who contribute to space missions.

Learning Objectives

  • The students learn some of the challenges that humankind faces when creating a Mars base.
  • Students work together as a team to come up with their own solutions to these challenges.
  • The groups learn about interdisciplinarity and the fact that people with many different professionals backgrounds have to collaborate to design solutions on a Mars base.

Materials needed

Print a copy of each of these documents for each group:

Script/programme of activity

1 1/2 hour workshop, which is flexible and can be adapted accordingly.

Students work together in groups of 3-4 students.

5 minutes: Each group watches the video above about Food on Mars.
15 minutes: Students sheet Food on Mars / The groups fill in the student sheet about challenges of ensuring food supply (Dansk version / Mad på Mars).
5 minutes: Groups watch the video above about oxygen on Mars.
15 minutes: Student sheet about Oxygen on Mars / Students work in their groups on answering the questions about oxygen supply on a Mars base (Dansk version / Ilt på Mars).
5 minutes: Each group watches the last video about the challenges of energy supply on Mars.
15 minutes: Student sheet about Energy on Mars / Together in their groups, students fill in the sheet about the energy supply on Mars (Dansk version / Energi på Mars).
20 minutes: As a sum up and evaluation, groups can present their findings to each other in the class.

Teacher/educator

The teacher facilitates the groups’ workshop by following their process and discussing the students’ solutions to the Mars base challenges.

Key elements for inclusivenes

The activity urges the students to be creative in designing their own robot system while at the same time collaborating with their team members.

Extra information

For more information please contact astronomi@planetarium.dk