Each year the University of Houston hosts over 700 students in grades 3-8 who have worked enthusiastically to build mars rover models that carry out specific science missions on the surface of Mars.
Students build models as part of a six-week STEM education project about Mars. They are given design criteria for a rover, and are required to conduct basic research about Mars that will determine the operational objectives and structural features of their rover.
This project has run successfully for ten years in spite of not having a formal curriculum to use. Now that funding has been secured by a NASA grant, I'll be working to develop a formal curriculum to help more students and teachers participate in this project.
