P2

Mars Mission 5 | Part 2

Part 2A: The Mars Lab team guides your class via video conferencing to carry out their mission.
Part 2B: Assisted by the teacher, Mars Lab team leads a discussion and wrap-up.

You will need:

  • A 100 minute period
  • Arrange the mission control room in 5 stations as shown in the mission control room set up diagram and in the station rotation information
  • Set up your room as mission control. Refer to the Mars Mission 5 Control Room setup
  • Confirm that the Teleoperation Interface and Mars Yard Maps is installed and running on all mission computers
  • Ensure the class has sufficiently practised driving the rover in the Virtual Mars Yard and ensure everyone is familiar with the workings and features of the teleoperation interface
  • Make sure that the computer at the Camera control station is connected to the projector so that everyone in the class can see what is on that screen
  • Also ensure that team members at the Driving control, Camera control and Pan/Tilt control stations can easily communicate with each other as these three stations will be working closely together
  • Ensure you understand the team roles and station rotation procedure
  • Using your standards based video conferencing, connect to the Mars Lab on: IP 203.9.149.252

2A: The mission

Approx. 75 minutes

The mission is the highlight of the virtual excursion where your class gets to drive the real robot rover and to play 5 different operational roles that will contribute to the class’ successful completion of the mission.
Team work, trust and communication will be important skills throughout the mission. For each leg of the mission, each team will rotate to a different mission control station to perform one of the 5 mission roles:

  • Driving team
  • Pan/tilt team
  • Cameras team
  • Logging team
  • Media team.

Refer to the ‘Station Rotation’ table and diagrams in the MM5 unit document.

 

2B: Discussion and wrap-up

Approx. 15 minutes

The Mars Lab team will lead the following discussion:

  • Reveal whether the teams were successful in capturing images of the correct surface landform features
  • Discuss the overall experience
  • Things that worked well or as planned
  • Things that could be done differently
  • Degree to which teams worked well together
  • Challenges
  • Unexpected things that happened.

 

The teacher must do the following:

  • Display the images of the Mars surface captured by the teams during the mission on your large screen. (NOTE: these images will be made available to you by the Mars Lab team during the mission).
  • Facilitate a brief discussion with all the students about the images taken and consider what conclusions you can make from them about the Martian surface.

 

Mars Lab team wrap-up

The Mars Lab team will wrap-up by congratulating and thanking the class for their participation in Mars Mission 5.