Titan & Europa Essay Contest - For Teachers:
The topic of the essay is either a mission to Saturn's moon Titan or to Jupiter's moon Europa. Both of these missions would study a world that is exciting for astrobiologists.
Your students' assignment is to decide which of the proposed missions would be more interesting and why. They should try to be creative and ask good questions, the type of questions that they'd hope the mission would answer.
The Titan mission would include a Titan orbiter and a Titan balloon. The Europa mission would include a Europa orbiter and a Europa lander. The orbiters, balloon, and lander would each have science instruments to study either Titan or Europa.
In their essay, your students can include information about what science instruments they would put on the orbiter and balloon or lander, if they wish, based on what you hope to find on Titan or Europa.
By participating in the essay contest, students will:
- Learn about real current and potential NASA missions
- Apply their critical thinking skills
- Learn how to conduct research
- Gain confidence in their ability to "do science"
- See themselves in the roles of scientists
- Watch videos by scientists and engineers, and expand their perception of who can be a scientist or engineer
- See that scientists have different opinions and priorities when choosing where their spacecraft will go and what they hope to learn
- Learn something new, and form questions about a place they may never have heard of
- Apply their writing skills
- The essays of winning students will be published on NASA websites
- Winning students and their classes will have the opportunity to ask questions of NASA scientists in a teleconference, videoconference, or web-based conversation
- All participating students will receive a certificate of participation
The Titan and Europa Essay Contest can be used as a classroom writing assignment in either English or Science classes. The assignment involves inquiry-based learning and problem-based learning. The essay contest meets various U.S. National Standards for English and Science Education set by the National Council of Teachers of English / International Reading Association, and the National Research Council. For a complete list, visit the English & Science Education Standards.
Teachers please include:
- your name, email address, telephone number including area code, and the name and address of the school, so that we may contact you.- The name(s) and grade(s) of all students who contributed to each essay (a maximum of four per essay).
- This essay contest meets U.S. National English and Science Education Standards. You are welcome (and encouraged) to use this contest as a class assignment. Please set a class deadline earlier than our contest deadline so you'll have a chance to review the students' essays and only send us the top few for judging by our contest deadline. - Only the top three essays from each class will be included in the judging. After submitting your top three essays per class, please send an email to titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov with the list of other students from your class(es) who wrote essays so we can make certificates of participation for them. If you teach more than one class, you may submit up to three top essays per class. - Once winners are selected, winners' teachers will be contacted and asked to provide a photograph of the student(s) to post on our website along with the winning essays. Parents/guardians must submit written authorization to let us post the photos online. If you have any questions, please send an email to: titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov