Mars exploration provides an exciting and coherent interdisciplinary theme for enhancing K-12 education. Using Mars to integrate math, science, social studies, literature, art, and other subjects is even better when there is a real mission to Mars underway. In late 1996, two U.S. spacecraft will embark upon a new mission of Mars exploration. Each will represent the culmination of significant engineering, financial, and political challenges in building spacecraft "better, faster, and cheaper." Mars Global Surveyor will use a new technique called aerobraking to slow the spacecraft and put it into a 400 km-high orbit. Mars Pathfinder will land on the Red Planet using giant inflated airbags to cushion the impact. Once they reach Mars, these two spacecraft will send back volumes of new scientific information about the composition and structure of the martian surface and atmosphere. Another lander and orbiter will be sent to Mars in 1998, to continue this new era of exploration.
Two years ago we experienced the loss of NASA's Mars Observer about one hour after we had completed our second teachers workshop. The year following the loss was full of surprises. In October 1993, NASA received funds to begin Mars Pathfinder, a spacecraft which promises to complete the first U.S. landing on Mars since 1976. In February 1994, NASA announced the Mars Surveyor program as an integrated effort to recover orbiter science lost by Mars Observer and pursue new international missions over the next 10 years. The first spacecraft in the Mars Surveyor series is Mars Global Surveyor. In July 1994, NASA selected Lockheed Martin of Denver, Colorado, to build the spacecraft. Some of the same instruments that were on Mars Observer will be carried on the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
Aboard Mars Global Surveyor will be the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES). The TES project began in 1984 when Dr. Philip Christensen and a team of scientists and engineers from around the U.S. proposed this instrument to determine the mineral composition of the martian surface. The first TES was built and launched in September 1992, aboard Mars Observer. The first steps toward construction of the new Mars Global Surveyor TES began early in 1994 and will continue until the instrument is complete in 1996. Once it is in space, the TES will be controlled from the campus of Arizona State University (ASU).
The ASU TES research group does not have an instrument aboard the other Mars mission launching in 1996-- Mars Pathfinder. However, the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program is committed to bringing news of this mission to the students of Arizona. Mars Pathfinder, too, has some unique and exciting Arizona connections. The imaging system for the lander is being developed under a team headed by Dr. Peter Smith at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In addition, an experiment to monitor wind speed and direction is being devised by Dr. Ronald Greeley and Dr. Robert Sullivan of Arizona State University.
This volume is our third K-12 Education Supplement and Guide. Our first was printed in August 1993, and contained information about the Mars Observer mission. We hope you will find this guide useful during the 1995-1996 school year in bringing the excitement of Mars exploration into your classroom. Please send us your comments on how we can improve the guide for next year. We also would like to hear how you are using the guide in your class this year.
This guide was compiled by Deb Wakefield and Ken Edgett. ASU students Kelli Mellgren and Brigitte Rigberg, plus Artesia, New Mexico, teachers Christy Tackas and Tammy Davis served as advisors and assistants in preparing the guide. The Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program is supported by NASA Grants NAGW 943, NAGW 3923, and JPL contracts 960112, 960235. The cover artwork was drawn by Kelli Mellgren with conceptual suggestions from Deb Wakefield. We also thank Rebecca Rowell and Kathy Patoni for administrative assistance.
For more information about the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program see: "To Mars by way of the School House," by K. Edgett, Mercury, v. 24, no. 4, pp. 28-31, July - August 1995. (Available through the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390 Ashton Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112-1787).