Introduction

This web quest is for you as a group of students to design a mission to Mars.  A team of scientist, engineers and astronauts from NASA is working now to determine the feasibility of sending manned missions to Mars.  They have to plan the mission, train for it, and convince government agencies to fund it.  Then imagine you actually get to go on this mission.  What would it be like there, and what problems do you see.

1. 1. Divide your team into the 4 occupations described above. Search the Web sites linked below, your school library, encyclopedia, and other sources that you can find to get information on technology and the possibility of Mars missions and of building a Mars Ship. The Scientist, Astronaut and Engineer each need to look for information that is related to your  area of specialty. Each student should check the links below and other sources for information in your area.
2. 2.  Create a file on your computer to hold this information.  Create a text document to store factual information to be used in your report.  Create a place in your folder to save graphics that might be used to illustrate your story. Each member of the team should contribute information that is appropriate to his area.  The Mission Coordinator is responsible for organizing the team, and collecting the information.
3. 3.  Create a brief report in Word, or Word Perfect, explaining why you want to go to Mars, the benefits to mankind, and what is involved in building a Mars Ship and actually going there.
4. 4.  Create a slide show in Powerpoint or Corel Presentations to convince Congress to fund your mission.  Each member of the team should contribute information from his/her research. The Mission Coordinator will then present this to the class.
5. 5.  Last, working as a group using either  publishing software, or a word processor that supports graphics, or a hypermedia program, create an illustrated story of a trip to Mars.  Give ideas of what might have happened on this imaginary voyage. 

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/
This is NASA's site on going to Mars.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/human_crew/index.html
This is also from NASA regarding problems of Humans in space.

http://advlifesupport.jsc.nasa.gov/
More on long space flights problems

Center for Mars Exploration
Another good site for Mars information.

http://www.time.com/time/reports/spaceempire/
This is a very interesting site on Mars exploration from Time Magazine

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/index.html
NASA's main site.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/mars_index.html
An interesting report on the mission from ABC News.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/emmart.html
Good site for art of possible mars mission.

Mars Introduction
General information about the planet

Mission to Mars
MSNBC site on Mars mission

Jet Propulsion Lab NASA Mars site
Jet Propulsion Lab Site.

There is much information on these sites, and many of them have links to other related sites.

There will be two grades for this project.  The group grade will be given according to the chart below. An individual grade for each student will be given according to this rubric.
 

By doing this project, you should better understand some of the obstacles involved and some of the possibilities for doing a real Mars Mission.

You also might want to use a similar idea to explore the possibilities of going to the Moon again, or even planets around other stars.  Space exploration is a topic that is only limited by how far we are willing to go.

Evaluation rubric based on The Comet Web Quest by Sue Anderson,  Salt Lake City.

Some graphics courtesy of NASA.