Asteroid Activities
The lessons below are teacher-favorite lessons focused on asteroids. For more search options or to search by other science target, missions and other criteria, visit our Fast Lesson Finder. You can also search by curriculum standards on our popular Curriculum Standards Quilts.
Asteroids Lessons:
Modeling the Solar System
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: This PDF contains four lessons:
1) Modeling Orbits in the Solar System. This lesson models the orbital distances between the planets and shows that the solar system is mostly empty space.
2) Modeling Sizes of Planets. This lesson compares the relative sizes of the planets to those of familiar fruits and vegetables. It also uses size to calculate density and planet composition.
3) Looking Inside Planets. This lesson involves modeling the interior structures of the planets and shows that the solid cores of the gas giants are similar in size to the Earth or Venus.
4) Search for A Habitable Planet. This lesson looks at the characteristics of planets that make them livable, their temperature, and compositions of atmosphere and surface instead of size
or orbit.
Mud Splat Craters
Topic: Planetary Surface Processes
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Pluto
Short Description: Observe crater formation in mud to introduce the idea of fluidized craters as seen on the surface of Mars.
Planetary Magnetics
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Asteroids
Mission: Cassini (Saturn)
Short Description: Participants demonstrate magnetism and its measurements and then apply these concepts to understanding the structure of surrogate planets.
Searching for Meteorites
Topic: Solar System Exploration
Grade Level: K-4, 5-8
Body: Asteroids
Mission: Hayabusa (Asteroids)
Short Description: Participants model the distribution of materials after meteorite impacts with the help of water balloons filled with flour and pebbles.
Size and Shape Imaged
Topic: Life
Body: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon
Short Description: This activity contains a series of images of very small things. Students will view the images, hear the information from a script, and make some observations and connections. They will see Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) images of small living organisms and rock surfaces. Then, using their new perspective, they will view unidentified samples and speculate about the surfaces and the origins of the features in the images. The goal is to get the students to think about looking at very small objects and to realize
that observations are a great way to start scientific research.
Solar System Exploration Mission Timeline Activity
Topic: Modeling Solar System Objects
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Our Solar System, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Meteors & Meteorites, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Dwarf Planets, Comets, Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud, Earth's Moon, Europa
Mission: ARTEMIS (Earth's Moon), Cassini (Saturn), Dawn (Dwarf Planets), DSN (Our Solar System), GRAIL (Earth's Moon), Hubble (Beyond Our Solar System), Huygens (Saturn), IBEX (Our Solar System), InSight (Mars), Juno (Jupiter), Lunar Recon Orbiter (Earth's Moon), MESSENGER (Mercury), NEAR Shoemaker (Asteroids), New Horizons (Dwarf Planets), Phoenix (Mars), Stardust (Comets), Venus Express (Venus), Viking 01 (Mars), Viking 02 (Mars), Voyager 1 (Our Solar System), Voyager 2 (Our Solar System)
Short Description: Extreme Exploration -- Solar System Exploration Missions Timeline involves students in the wide range of mission events of 2008-2015+. Using the Solar System Exploration Timeline poster as a guide, student teams research assigned missions and record events such as launch and landing, etc. It is expected that students will be drawn into the excitement of mission events as they follow along with NASA's Solar System Exploration -- past, current, and future.
Space Math: Close Encounters of the Asteroid Kind!
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Asteroids
Short Description: On September 8, 2010 two small asteroids came within 80,000 km of Earth. Their small size of only 15 m made them very hard to see without telescopes pointed in exactly the right direction at the right time. In this problem, based on a NASA press release, students use a simple formula to calculate the brightness of these asteroids from their distance and size.
Space Math: So..How big is it? -- Asteroid Eros surface
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 5-8
Body: Asteroids
Mission: NEAR Shoemaker (Asteroids)
Short Description: Students calculate the scale of an image of the surface of the asteroid Eros from the NEAR mission, and determine how big rocks and boulders are on its surface.
Space Math: The Dawn Mission -- Ion Rockets and Spiral Orbits
Topic: Math
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Asteroids
Mission: Dawn (Dwarf Planets)
Short Description: Students determine the shape of the trajectory taken by a spacecraft using a constant-thrust ion motor using differential and integral calculus for arc lengths.
Structure and Properties of Matter: Ion Propulsion Module (Main Portal)
Topic: Designing Spacecraft
Grade Level: 9-12
Body: Asteroids
Mission: Dawn (Dwarf Planets)
Short Description: This module is intended to engage students and the interested public in the propulsion technology that is necessary for Dawn to complete its mission. As students interact with this module, they will gain an understanding of charges and relative charge, momentum and frames of reference, ionization and plasma, how an ion propulsion system works, and they will experiment with designing an ion engine to determine optimal conditions.
