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Icy Worlds – U4, Lesson 4: Mission Integration and Iteration

Lesson Summary: Students will bring together the various components of their final challenge (robot, drone, map) and rehearse the complete final mission, identify failure points, and iterate to improve their mission. In addition, they will collaboratively create a mission design patch.

Lesson Level Question: How does bringing all parts of a complex mission together for rehearsal lead to better mission outcomes?

40 minutes

Engage

Students will examine several mission patches from former NASA missions and try to understand what each mission was about based on the patch. Then, they will learn more about the patches and the missions they represent to help launch their own patch designs.

40 minutes

120 minutes

Explore

Students will briefly review their progress on their missions so far, and then students will rehearse the final part of their mission, documenting each attempt and improvements made.

120 minutes

40 minutes

Explain

Students will examine their rehearsal documents and identify their final plan for their mission demonstration to clients.

40 minutes

40 minutes

Elaborate

Students will design their mission patch and make any necessary additions to their MDLs.

40 minutes

30 minutes

Evaluate

Students will include their mission patch, mission patch narrative, iteration documents, and final mission plan in their MDLs.

30 minutes

Extend (optional)

Students will take a deeper look at NASA’s history of mission patches.