SIMULATED SPACE MISSIONS
It’s always perfect launch weather when students venture beyond their schoolyards and enter a Challenger Learning Center. Within minutes, they are transported throughout the Solar System—perhaps to rendezvous with a comet, or maybe even voyage to the Moon or Mars.
Challenger Learning Centers offer realistic mock-ups of Mission Control and an orbiting space station. Students join teams at computer consoles or onboard the orbiting space lab, rev up their imaginations, and work together toward the mission’s goal, whether it is the launching of a probe or the interception of a comet.
It’s clear that a visit to a Challenger Learning Center isn’t just a field trip—it is a deeply grounded learning experience that engages students, transforming them into scientists, engineers, or researchers, and placing them in a simulated space mission where they solve real-life challenges.
Rooted in national education standards in all of the communities we serve, Challenger Learning Centers reach over 500,000 students and upwards of 20,000 teachers per year through a broad array of mission-based activities.
Regardless of a student’s cultural background, economic situation, gender, learning style, or academic level, every Challenger Learning Center simulation provides students with an opportunity to succeed. Every mission is successful! Students leave with a renewed spirit of camaraderie and boosted self-esteem.
Voyage to Mars
In Earth years, it is 2076, and the now routine Voyage to Mars has brought the latest human crew into Martian orbit. The Mars Control team has been living on Mars for two years. Anxious to get home, they direct the Mars Transport Vehicle team (their replacement crew) to arrive on the planet safely so that they are able to take over the Mars Mission. This will allow the Mars Control team to return home Earth on schedule.
TEACHERS: Register your class for this mission » CLUBS and SOCIAL GROUPS: Register for a social mission » CORPORATIONS: Register for a corporate teambuilding mission » Is NASA really flying missions like this? YES!
+ http://mars.jpl.nasa.govRendezvous With A Comet
In the not-too-distant future a team of scientists and engineers are serving as astronauts and mission controllers on a daring exploration of comets. Their goal is to plot a course to rendezvous with a comet and launch a probe to collect scientific data on the object.
TEACHERS: Register your class for this mission » Is NASA really flying missions like this? YES!
+ http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov