Design a Planet Webcast
Original broadcast date - November 17, 2005

What combinations of variables make a planet habitable to humans? Why?

While Earth is currently the only habitable planet we know, computer modeling can be used to combine many possible variables and generate other possibly habitable planets.

Students are encouraged to use the newly released Design a Planet simulation module to try to design a habitable planet for humans. For background information to help with their designs, they may also explore other Astro-Venture resources. Email us your successful combinations that result in habitable planets, and we will post them on this site. Then, tune in for the culminating webcast to learn about a computer modeling program NASA is developing to help search for habitable planets outside our solar system.
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Classroom Challenge: Design a Martian
Original broadcast date - December 3, 2003

Classrooms around the world are invited to investigate what makes our planet habitable. Using Astro-Venture online tools, find the different characteristics of our planet and star system and discuss why they are important.

Compare Earth to Mars and research what characteristics are important in supporting human life. Then, you will be ready to design your Martian—a life-form that could live on Mars.

Geoff Briggs, Scientific Director of NASA's Center for Mars Exploration, and Jon Rask, Experiment Support Scientist/Research Scientist, Space Station Biological Research Project, were on hand for this webcast. See what NASA is now doing in the support of finding out if life exists on Mars, and find out what they have to say about student designs.
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The Search for Extra-Solar Planets
Doppler Shift: Giant Planets Detected from Beyond our Solar System
Original broadcast date - April 9, 2002

Drawing on the interactive activities of Astro Venture in which students in grades 5-8 role play NASA occupations as they search for and build a planet that would be habitable to humans, this event shows how Doppler Shift has been used to detect large extra-solar planets and how photometry is being proposed for detecting Earth-size planets.

Research Scientist Ed Prather and Dawn McIntosh were on hand to answer questions.
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The Search for Extra-Solar Planets
Spectroscopy: Determining a Star's Type
Habitable Zone: Determining a Planet's Distance from its Star
Original broadcast date - April 2, 2002

This webcast also draws on the interactive activities of Astro Venture in which students in grades 5-8 role play NASA occupations as they search for and build a planet that would be habitable to humans. This event looks at the need for liquid water and how star type and the planet's orbital distance are two interrelated requirements for the presence of water. The event also looks at methods that scientists use to determine a star's type and the orbital distance of a planet orbiting a star.

Astrophysicist Yvonne Pendelton and NASA Project Scientist Michael Kaufman were on hand to answer questions.
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