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Mission: Solar System - Inspector Detector

From Design Squad Global

Mission: Solar System - Inspector Detector
3 min3rd4th5th6thScienceTechnology
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Summary

Part of Design Squad's NASA-inspired “Mission: Solar System” challenges: build a detector to inspect a planet in this NASA challenge. Kids use the engineering design process and see how engineers build sensors to gather information.

Viewer safety

All ages
Common Sense Media — not yet ratedIMDb Parents Guide — not yet rated

Our rating is a quick teacher-to-teacher guide — preview before showing.

Teaching resources

Discussion questions

Talk it over after the build:

  1. What problem or goal was this build trying to solve?
  2. What materials and shapes made it work — how engineers build sensors to gather information?
  3. If you built it again, what one change would make it work even better, and why?

Quick work-a-long

Words to know: design process, prototype, constraint, test.

Try it:

  1. Sketch your own version of this build before you start.
  2. Build it, test it once, then change one thing to improve it — and test again.