Teaching Modules

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"Rocknest" from Sol 52 location of MSL Curiosity Rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Provenance: Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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The lesson modules below are designed for use in the undergraduate classroom and include teaching materials including details and handouts for in-class activities and homework.

Introduction to Mars

This introduction will expose students to Mars imaging software platforms so that students may become familiar with their navigation and imagery products.

Remote Sensing Mars

This learning module and related laboratory exercise exposes students to remote sensing techniques utilized on Mars.

Olympus Mons and Igneous Rocks

This learning module and related laboratory exercise exposes students to volcanic styles, eruptions, igneous rock textures and their evidence in the Martian landscape.

How Mars Rocks Change & Evolve

Students will be exposed to the processes of metamorphism and diagenesis on Earth and determine which processes are dominant on Mars. Are diagenetic processes on Earth mirrored on Mars?

Surface Sculpting Waters On Mars

This learning module and related laboratory exercise exposes students to surface water erosion due to rivers and deltas and their evidence on the Martian landscape. Students will use modern analogs to assess the hypothesis that both rivers and deltas existed on Mars.

Vast Deserts on Mars

Using a Sandbox experiment and Google Earth students will study the formation of dunes and relate their observations to Mars imagery of dune fields.

Mars Water World

It is hypothesized that an ocean on Mars might have existed. Student will learn what sedimentary structures of Earth marine environments in the ancient look like and the processes that formed them. From this earth-analog approach students will observe Mars imagery and determine whether or not a Mars ocean might have existed in the distant past.

Extremophiles

This learning module and related laboratory exercise exposes students to extremophiles, their habitats and the potential to find habitable environments on Mars.

The Issues of Space Exploration

This learning module and related exercises will expose students the issues of space exploration and the other NASA-partnering agencies and institutions as well as private companies engaged in space-related technology.