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Search for Life on Mars Mission
For Trimester 3, we will partake in a Search for Life on Mars Mission (SLMM). NASA has been exploring Mars for the past 40 years using flyby spacecraft, orbiters, landers, and rovers. Now it's your turn!

The Defining Question for Mars Exploration: Life on Mars?
 * From the past 40 years of exploration, NASA has learned that Mars is a cold, bleak wasteland, with very thin air that we could never breathe on our own.
 * However, many of the pictures that their telescopes, orbiters, and rovers have sent back show signs that liquid water might have been on Mars' surface long ago.
 * Mars also has ice caps at its north and south poles.
 * On Earth, almost everwhere there is water, there is life. Could this be true for Mars too?
 * If water once flowed on Mars, did life once thrive there too?
 * Or maybe there still is water on Mars, only it has gone underground.
 * Could there be tiny life forms, like bacteria, on Mars even now?
 * NASA's Mars Exploration Program is about "Following the Water." Even if we don't find life on Mars, if there is water, perhaps someday Mars could be inhabited by us.

Our SLMM will include:
 * 1) Your Mars Mission Logbook - you will log all of your important findings on your own personal Wiki page.
 * 2) Electronics and Magnetism - you will investigate simple circuits, types of electricity, and magnetic phenomena in order to be able to create your spacecraft and robot rover.
 * 3) Rocketry - you and a partner will build a model rocket and launch it. You also will calculate how high it flies and will compete against the rest of the Science 7 classes to see whose rocket flies the highest!
 * 4) Astronomy - you will learn about Mars' position in our solar system in order to be able to plan a flight path.
 * 5) Robotics and Computers - you will learn how to control robot "rovers" with Lego Mindstorms software.
 * 6) Geology - you will learn about rock formations on Mars and what evidence they have that life may have excited on Mars.
 * 7) Biology - you will define what is life, examine simple forms of life with microscopes, and learn about cells and how to classify living organisms