The Red Planet
Students read the landforms, ice, weather and air of Mars as evidence for how a once wetter planet became a cold desert.
Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops9 stops
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What students will see and do
Students start at Earth, then fly through seven Mars stops covering its basic properties, giant volcanoes, Valles Marineris, ancient water, polar caps, dust storms and its two moons, plus a stop at the Sun to see how the solar wind stripped Mars's air. The class pauses at the Earth stop to reason about launch timing and at the Sun stop to connect a cooling core with a lost magnetic shield.
Learning objectives
- Compare the size, gravity, day, year and distance of Mars with Earth using scale data
- Explain how the lack of plate tectonics helped Olympus Mons grow so large
- Cite at least three pieces of evidence that liquid water once existed on Mars
- Describe how a fading magnetic field and the solar wind led to Mars losing much of its atmosphere
NGSS connections
| MS-ESS1-3 | Students analyze scale properties of Mars, such as its diameter, gravity, orbital period and changing distance from Earth. |
|---|---|
| MS-ESS2-2 | Students explain how geoscience processes, including volcanism, crustal cracking, flowing water, wind and ice, shaped the surface of Mars over very different time scales. |
Stops on this journey
- Seeing Mars from Home (discussion stop)
- Meet Mars
- The Giant Volcanoes
- A Canyon Across a Continent
- Clues of Ancient Water
- Ice Caps and Seasons
- Dust Storms and Blue Sunsets
- Where Did the Air Go? (discussion stop)
- Two Tiny Moons
Vocabulary
- iron oxide
- sol
- shield volcano
- plate tectonics
- canyon
- delta
- dry ice
- solar wind