How do you design a rover to explore an environment we know nothing about? Scientists create unique vehicles for exploring underwater, extremely hot, windy, and other extreme environments. An installment from the SciShow Space series shares three rovers that haven't made it to space yet—but might one day allow us to explore areas otherwise off limits.

Concepts

mars rover, engineering, nasa, robots, robotics

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Additional Tags

science

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Instructional Ideas

• Invite a local robotics team to speak to the class about their challenges
• Assign students a planet or moon to research and decide what issues a rover might face when visiting and how to overcome at least one issue

Classroom Considerations

• Relies on prior knowledge of rovers, NASA, space exploration, and environments on other planets and moons

• This video is hosted on YouTube

Pros

• Lists many resources for extending learning in the description
• Encourages creative thinking, problem solving, and inventing new technology

Cons

• None

Common Core

SL.9-10.2 SL.11-12.2 RST.9-10.4 RST.11-12.4