Asteroids
The potential danger of an asteroid colliding with EarthCopyright Pixabay, Creative Commons CC0. https://pixabay.com/en/armageddon-apocalypse-earth-2104385/
Students learn some basic facts about asteroids in our solar system, mainly about the size of asteroids and how that relates to the potential danger of an asteroid colliding with the Earth. Students are briefly introduced to the destruction that would ensue should a large asteroid hit, as it did 65 million years ago. Students are then encouraged to use the associated activity to research the impacts and potential actions to prevent such events on Earth.
Engineers at NASA create technological tools to learn about asteroids. People working on the Near-Earth-Object (NEO) project study how asteroids move so we can predict whether they will hit the Earth. Software engineers design the computer programs to make these predictions. Mechanical and aerospace engineers on this project create space probes to learn more about asteroids by taking photographs of them and, in the case of the NEAR Shoemaker probe, even landing on a large asteroid.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain what asteroids are and compare them to other objects in the solar system.
- State how big an asteroid must be to cause mass destruction on Earth.
- Explain why engineers design technological tools to predict the movement of asteroids.