Dec. 12-18, 2013, Current Events Lesson Plan
Current Event:
On December 14, China became the third country to “soft land” an unpiloted spacecraft on the moon when its Chang’e-3 spacecraft touched down on the lunar surface. In a soft landing, the craft and its equipment are not damaged during the landing and so can be used for observation and scientific experiments. In 1966, the former Soviet Union (now Russia) became the first country to soft-land a probe on the moon. The first soft-lander from the United States touched down later in 1966. Several hours after landing, Chang’e-3 released a rover named Jade Rabbit. In Chinese mythology, Chang’e is a moon goddess who is accompanied by a jade rabbit. The six-wheeled rover, which weighs about 300 pounds (135 kilograms), is powered by solar energy during the day and batteries at night. It is scheduled to study the geology of the lunar surface and search for minerals and other natural resources for three months. The landing craft is expected to conduct experiments and observations from its touchdown site for a year.
Objective:
The moon is Earth‘s only natural satellite and the only astronomical body other than Earth ever visited by human beings. The moon is the brightest object in the night sky but gives off no light of its own. Instead, it reflects light from the sun. The moon is much smaller and less massive than Earth. Because the moon has less mass than Earth, the force due to gravity at the lunar surface is only about 1/6 of that on Earth. Thus, a person who weighed 100 pounds standing on Earth would weigh about 17 pounds on the moon. The moon revolves around Earth once with respect to the sun in about 29 1/2 days, the same time it takes the moon to rotate on its axis. As a result, the moon shows the same hemisphere–the near side–to Earth at all times. The other hemisphere–the far side–is always turned away from Earth. In 1959, scientists began to explore the moon with robot spacecraft. In that year, the Soviet Union sent a spacecraft called Luna 3 around the far side of the moon. On July 20, 1969, the U.S. Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the moon in the first of six Apollo landings. Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. The Behind the Headlines news stories and related World Book articles explore the moon and other astronomical topics.
Words to know:
- Astronaut
- Astronomy
- China
- Gravitation
- Moon
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- Neil Armstrong
- Satellite
- Solar system
- Space exploration
Discussion Topics:
1. Excluding Earth, five other planets in the solar system have satellites. Ask your students to name the other five planets with satellites. (Students should say Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Dwarf planet Pluto also has satellites.)
2. Ask your students to debate, “One day, people will live in the moon.”
3. Ask your students to debate, ‘Money spent on space exploration is money well spent.” (NASA‘s 2013 budget is about one-half of 1 percent of the total 2013 budget of the United States.)
4. Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to create a timeline of the history of moon exploration. (Students may wish to use World Book’s Moon article for help.)