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ASTRONOMY 103: Moons and Planets     Week 10  Spring  2009 Lab Update Date Class Topic Readings/Assignments Monday,    April 6 Mars Exploration group presentations: Phoenix. Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Odyssey see below Wednesday,  April 8 Mars Exploration group presentations: Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Science Laboratory see below Friday,    April 10 Video: To Boldly Go (Intro to the Jovian planets) TBA * marks optional (but useful!) readings   week 1 week2 week 3 week 4 week 5   week 6   week 7 week 8 week 9 week 10 week 11   week 12 week 13 week 14   Full Schedule

Announcements:

Assignments:

Mars Exploration Small Group Assignment: Presentations in class are Monday April 6,  and Wednesday  April 8. (40% of your "assignments" grade) In  groups of 2- 4 research and prepare a presentation on one of the Mars missions listed. Plan on giving a 15 minute presentation on the day assigned for your mission. Also, turn in an outline of the group presentation. For your research, start with the mission web site listed. You'll have to dig around a bit on the web sites. I personally don't find these web sites to be well organized. You may think otherwise. For Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter there will be a horizontal gray menu bar near the top with choices for "overview", "science", "technology", " the mission", etc. Follow those links to find more information. To find out about the instruments on each, click on the "Science" tab and scroll to the bottom. There you should find a link to the instruments, and sometime you have to follow more links to get more info. Images from the mission are usually found under the "multimedia" tab.  The other missions are organized differently; you'll have to look around.  Things to look for are: the mission objectives, mission time line, major accomplishments, the scientific instruments (what they are, what they measure, what they found), the scientific accomplishments, images and other data (maps of various types etc). . I will post a sign up sheet for the missions/topic in the classroom.

Advice for the presentations

Past:

• Phoenix: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/     Kate and Sarah

Current:

• Mars Odyssey: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/  Claire, Kristina

• Mars Exploration Rover: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html  Sam, Ashley, Ali, Bri 

• Mars Express: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=9 Shannon, Citlaly, Conner

• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/   Tess, Emily, Rebecca

• Mars Science Laboratory: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/index.cfm Kyle, Andrew, Mike