Overview 

The goal of this activity is for students to follow the engineering process; to get them to design, build, test and amend a product. Throughout this exercise, students will be led through the process by first sparking their curiosity with a discussion on the first Moon landing. Following this, students will discuss what problems they’d need to overcome to land safely on the Moon. They will then pull from knowledge they already have by considering the mechanisms we use to land safely ourselves from a jump. Finally, the students will put all this background information into use and build a lunar lander that will survive a drop from a set height without taking damage and while protecting the astronaut inside it. They have the freedom to try out any design they wish based on the introduction given to the mechanisms we use to land safely and the restrictions given by the environment of the Moon. 

A NASA astronaut on the moon.