MARS EXPRESS: USING RESEARCH DATA TO SUPPORT FORMAL AND INFORMAL EDUCATION

People have always been fascinated by Mars, and having five operating spacecraft there this year has stimulated significant interest and media attention. The National Air and Space Museum seeks to leverage that interest into learning opportunities on the Museum floor and in the Museum classroom. Mars Express is particularly useful in this effort, because its data can be tied to many other exhibits throughout the Museum, as well as to our “Mission to Mars” classroom activity. It makes an excellent counterpoint to the Mars Exploration Rovers, providing the global “big picture” context, while the MERs engage the imagination with surface operations that produce a vicarious thrill in visitor and student alike. Both missions also allow us to showcase the research side of NASM; we have staff scientists involved in the operations and/or research side of both.

We use new exhibits, “What’s New” screens, and a realistic rover driving activity, developed by our partners at NASA Ames and Carnegie Mellon, to capture interest of visitors in both NASM locations. Staff and/or volunteers review the latest Mars exploration results with the receptive audience waiting to drive, personalizing the discussion as age, background, and interest levels require. The 3-D anaglyphs produced by the Mars Express team are particularly popular among the learning props we use, and they mesh well with the showing of a 3-D IMAX film and use of stereoscopic displays elsewhere in the Museum. Mars Express multi-spectral data link nicely with exhibits in our galleries relating to terrestrial remote sensing, astronomy, and planetary exploration. We also use analogies to help our visitors understand exploration strategy and tactics. For example, we can get visitors thinking about using radar sounding to probe a planet’s subsurface by making comparisons, however imperfect, to familiar types of non-destructive examination like MRI and CAT scans, X-rays, ultrasound, and even more mundane things like finding wall studs when hanging pictures!

In the classroom, the situation is no less based on inquiry, but the audience having the same background allows the instructor greater control of the educational experience, particularly depth and focus of coverage, so as to best fit the NASM classroom experience into the context of their overall lesson plan.