MO-8: Reflecting on and Presenting Your Mission

IT’S GO TIME! Your team has modeled and tested its mission to Venus, and now it is time to share your findings.  Put the finishing touches on your MDL and present your work. Can you convince NASA that you’re ready to launch?  Students will do a final demonstration of MO-5 and MO-6 and create a tri-fold board for another MO of their choice.

Teams should prepare a tri-fold (maximum size 36” by 48”) to present their choice of the following MOs

• MO-4 (Investigating Atmospheres)
• MO-2 (Building a Strong Project Team) and MO-7 (Envisioning Your Role)
• MO-3 (Modeling Moving Carbon)

Regardless of which option your team chooses, the tri-fold board should contain:

• The team name, team members’ names, and mission patch
• The number and title of the MO or MOs featured on the board
• Text, photos, drawings, data, artifacts (experimental set-ups or prototypes), and other information to summarize the team’s work. Use the MO Deliverables as a guide for the board’s content.

All team members should be prepared to answer questions about the MO or MOs on their board.

Demonstration of Capturing Data From Afar (MO-5) 

First, teams will showcase their new expertise in remote sensing data collection by demonstrating safe procedures for launching, collecting data, and retrieving a kite with an Aeropod attached. If wind conditions are favorable, this can be done outside. If the weather is not appropriate, teams may instead demonstrate and explain their procedures indoors without actually launching the kite.

Next, teams will present and describe data from a previous Aeropod flight. They should show their original classified image and any graphs they created to quantify the area covered by each type of terrain. Teams will then describe what they observed and mapped in their image, the challenges they faced during the flight or analysis process, and how planetary scientists might address similar limitations. Finally, they should explain what they would change or improve if they conducted a second Aeropod mission.

If teams collected multiple images over time, they may also describe any changes they observed.

Demonstration of ROV-ing for Detailed Data (MO-6)

Teams will demonstrate that their rover can navigate the Earth-to-Venus robot course and collect data from all three data collection points. First, teams will run their robot with a color sensor to gather as much data as possible within a 5-minute time limit. Next, they will have 5 minutes to analyze the RGB values collected and identify the types of rocks they observed by comparing their data to the provided key of rock compositions.