Mars Rover Design Project
In preparation for their novel read, A Rover's Story, seventh graders created their own rovers using Tinkercad.
Juliana Neves and Hannah Gallagher, 7th grade English teachers and Vanessa Miller, the Upper School Makery Facilitator teamed up for a seventh-grade Mars Rover Design project to bring students to Mars before they dove into the actual novel. The project is a great example of how the Makery is felt through all grade levels and subject areas, beyond its physical space.
In this project, students learned about the NASA Mars Rover Program and used Tinkercad to address these design questions:
- How will it collect physical specimens?
- How will it collect images or collect data?
- How can it move across rough/uneven terrain?
- How can it communicate back to NASA computers?
In the novel, the rover Res was built to explore Mars but he begins to develop humanlike feelings from the NASA scientists who assemble him. Our seventh graders engaged with that narrative line and an important aspect of the design process was naming their rover and writing a reflection about how it embodies the mission. Names included, “Courage”, “Believer”, “Star Searcher” and “Fearless”!
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