To discover a billion-dollar asteroid

Asteroid Mining

You’ve chosen to imagine discovering an asteroid packed with useful materials far from Earth. You might want to learn more about asteroid mining, which explores ways to collect water and minerals from space rocks. But remember to save some space rocks for space!

Fun Facts:

More than 5,000 years ago, people in Egypt made jewelry beads from iron that fell to Earth in a meteorite.
NASA brought home 4.29 ounces of asteroid Bennu, the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space.
NASA has sent a spacecraft to Asteroid Psyche, which may be made of 30% to 60% metal.

Asteroid Mining

LISTEN

We’re exploring asteroid mining, or getting useful materials from space rocks. Some asteroids contain metals, while others hold water-rich minerals. We already collect tiny asteroid samples and study new ways to extract resources. Mining an asteroid at a large scale would still require major advances in robotics, transportation, processing, economics, and international governance. So we would still need to make thoughtful choices about how resources are used—and save some space rocks for space!

Fun Facts:

A NASA-funded idea called Mini Bee would wrap an asteroid in a giant bag and use concentrated sunlight to pull out water.
NASA deliberately crashed the DART spacecraft into asteroid Dimorphos and shortened its orbit by about 33 minutes.
Bennu’s dust contains carbon, nitrogen, organic compounds, and a surprising water-soluble phosphate mineral.
Asteroid Itokawa is not one solid rock—it is a loose “rubble pile” held together by gravity.
Japan’s Hayabusa became the first spacecraft to return material from a near-Earth object in 2010, even though its sampler did not work as planned.

Discussion Question:

Should anyone be allowed to claim an asteroid as their own? Why or why not?

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Physical Build:

You can build an asteroid-mining machine using cardboard, foil, straws, cups, tape, and recycled materials. Crumple foil into an asteroid, then design one part that gathers rocks and another that stores your pretend resources. Test your machine, notice what is difficult, and change your design until it works better.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Invent three ways a robot could collect water and metal from an asteroid without breaking the whole asteroid apart.”

Choose the idea you like best, change anything you want, then draw or build your own asteroid-mining robot.

or a new form of alien life on Mars?

Alien Life Form

Astrobiology

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You’ve chosen to imagine discovering a completely new form of life on Mars. You might want to learn more about alien life science, or astrobiology, which studies how life begins, survives, and might exist beyond Earth. First rule of alien science: don’t squish the evidence with your space boot!

Fun Facts:

In 1976, NASA’s Viking landers carried three experiments searching for Martian life, but they found no clear evidence of living microbes.
Perseverance found tiny “leopard spots” in a Mars rock that could hold clues to ancient microbial life, although other explanations are still possible.
A rock drilled by Curiosity contains multiple carbon-based molecules, including seven never detected on Mars before.

Astrobiology

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We’re exploring life in the universe, also called astrobiology. It asks what life needs and where else it could survive. Our Mars rovers search ancient rocks for clues left by possible life, while Earth’s toughest microbes show us that life can survive surprising places. A possible sign of life is called a biosignature, but every candidate requires careful testing before we know what it means. And always remember the first rule of alien science: don’t squish the evidence with your space boot!

Fun Facts:

Mars’s Jezero Crater once held a lake and river delta more than 3.5 billion years ago.
NASA tested a portable “Chemical Laptop” for finding signs of life in Chile’s super-dry Atacama Desert, where only very tough microbes survive.
At deep-sea vents, microbes can use chemicals instead of sunlight to power entire ecosystems in the dark.
Microbes, orchids, and blue whales all build life mostly from the same six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. NASA calls this ingredient list “CHNOPS.”
Perseverance’s wheel treads were covered during assembly so Earth microbes would not hitchhike to Mars.

Discussion Question:

How could our future change if Mars had life—or if it had none?

LISTEN

Physical Build:

You can invent a Martian life-form using clay, paper, cardboard, foil, or recycled materials. Decide how your creature or tiny organism handles cold, dryness, and limited water. Build more than one version and change its body each time to test different survival ideas.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Imagine three very different life-forms that could survive on ancient Mars near a lake.”

Choose one idea as a starting point, then redesign it yourself. Draw or build your creature and show what it needs to survive.