Space

Module description

Space captivates our imagination from earlier childhood. Questions about the infinity of the Universe, extra-terrestrial life and the possibility of space travel to other planets and beyond excite the minds of many youngsters. Children generally have an innate instinct to explore and a solid will to experience and understand. Some of them dream about being space explorers.

Space travel has already become achievable for not professional astronauts. Some paying passengers went to the International Space Station (ISS), including Anousheh Ansari, the first Iranian and Muslim woman in space (2006). Commercial programs are established for suborbital flight at a height of about 100 km over the Earth's surface. Orbital tourist flights around the Earth require almost double the height and much more velocity and energy by the spaceship, but they are also envisioned soon. Among our students today may be future professional and amateur space explorers.

However, many misconceptions, myths and conspiracy theories about space travel circulate daily. UFOs that visit us from outer space and the never-mentioned human moon landing are just two examples of those that appear in the media. Incidences of such rumours are still around for a while as the public can observe different kinds of unusual drones more often nowadays, and new human moon landing programmes are announced. The current American "Artemis Project" and Chinese moon program called "Chang Project" seems to start competing to see who will land on the Moon first this time and attract once again public attention to this area.

Many of our students are familiar with spaceship functions through different space games for computers and smartphones and water rocket launching activities in schools or science centres. They know the feeling of short weightlessness from amusement parks or aeroplanes. Some of them probably experienced a tour of the International Space Station (ISS) with the help of a VR application released for free in the Oculus store or have seen a film about ISS in 3D theatre at science museums.

The era of space exploration started in 1957 with the launch of the first satellite (Sputnik) to orbit around the Earth. Technology has developed enormously during these years; however, space exploration goes slower than predicted, entails many risks and uncertainties and is accompanied by different technology failures. A recent attempt (January 2023) to launch satellites, for the first time from British soil, using a rocket launch technology developed by Virgin Orbit company, failed to reach orbit, destroying the entire payload of nine satellites. The Virgin company's space tourism division, Virgin Galactic, which has promised since 2004 to begin regular suborbital flights for paying space tourists using similar launching technology, has yet to deliver on that pledge. Virgin's approach is to lift a spacecraft under the wing of a Boeing 747 to about 10000 m altitude and then fire it up. This recent Virgin failure shows once again that space exploration always carries significant risks, particularly in launching spacecraft and returning space missions to the Earth. The issues of dealing with risks and associated moral dilemmas of sending human missions to space are the focus of this module.

Working with this module, teachers can choose to do some practical activities and demonstrations to explain phenomena, debunk space-related myths or explore common misconceptions when school facilities provide for this. Otherwise, we suggest doing this through evidence collection from reliable sources of scientific and professional information. Students can also use different data collection methods, applying the so-called triangulation principle – increasing the validity of findings by converging information from different sources.

In the introductory videos (teacher can select among “Earth Calls Martha”, “3-2-1”, “Where are all the Aliens”, and “Flag in the Wind”), some ideas, conspiracy theories, misconceptions and myths are brought up which are suggested for further discussions in groups. Students are invited to select and explain common space-related myths or misconceptions. Group discussions are expected to lead to evidence collection from reliable data sources to gain deeper insight into a phenomenon and falsify or confirm a chosen myth.

Human space travel will probably attract the special attention of the students. Some biological effects of space travel, such as space motion sickness or Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS), can be experienced practically on Earth through centrifugation (Sickness Induced by Centrifugation, SIC). However, few of us would probably like to be exposed to centrifuge and simultaneous rotations going from 1G to 3G (or higher) and back to 1G, a part of standard astronaut training. A light version of such an experience is available in some amusement parks as “Insanity Rides 360”.

Most activities suggested in this module will rely on secondary evidence gathered through literature searches and data collected from the internet. Through these activities, students learn to assess the reliability of information sources and make evidence-based arguments. After drawing conclusions, students prepare to present their findings to their classmates (or other audiences) in a relevant and convincing manner (e.g. video posts). The module is finished with a debate roleplay where students can make socio-scientific decisions using their scientific knowledge while incorporating it with personal, moral and social values.

The module comprises teacher material (teaching suggestions, science background information) and student material (introductory video, interactive worksheets, fact videos, and a video tutorial).

Learning objectives targeted by the module

• Citizenship competence: develop students’ knowledge and attitudes towards making responsible decisions related to human and robotic space explorations.
• Media competence:
  • develop students’ skills in assessing the reliability of information, presenting the information in a manner relevant to a given audience,
  • reacting adequately and responsibly to fake news and conspiracy theories presented in (social)media.
• Digital competence: develop students’ skills in using digital media while presenting their inquiry results to the other groups.
• Science competence:
  • develop students’ understanding of the ways how science knowledge is generated and why we should trust science;
  • develop further students’ knowledge about the pros and cons of human space explorations;
  • develop their ability to plan and devise procedures for testing the myth and interpret the findings.
• Social competence: develop students’ argumentation skills and skills when finding group consensus on controversial space-related issues.

Potential obstacles to consider

Students are expected to have experience evaluating the reliability of information sources on the Internet. Otherwise, it might take extra teaching time to work on this issue.

Module structure

This module consists of 6 activities. The sequence of activities is given in Figure 1 and Table 1 (see below).

Table 1. Learning activities of the Evidence modules

Requirements for physical environment

Smartphone, computer, internet, display equipment for demonstrating videos.

Assessment

Students can be assessed in different ways throughout the module, including science process skills, general competencies, such as argumentation skills, and topic-related content knowledge. Assessments that could be applied in this module:

Formative:

• Oral/written feedback from the teacher (based on observations, questions asked, etc.) throughout the module, during the experiments, and in other formats of individual/group work.
• Self- and peer assessment on the group presentation using the pre-determined criteria and the following tool.

Summative:

• Grades assigned by the teacher on the group presentation (based on the students’ video product, poster, etc. and its performance and students’ ability to provide relevant answers/comments).
• Grades assigned by the teacher on group or individual worksheets.

Teaching suggestions

The module activities can be structured in two parts. The first part (Activities 1-5) concerns work with specific space-related myths, ideas, controversies and issues that could be identified in an introductory video, recalled by the students or suggested by the teacher. The second part (Activity 6) focuses on work with the socio-scientific topic of human space travels that is summed up with the help of a debate game/role-play (see student material moderated by the teacher).

After a short introduction, as a warm-up activity, students can, in small groups, think about what questions they would like to ask an astronaut/space researcher if they had a chance (two-three questions per group to be presented). This will allow them to probe their interests and expectations concerning the subject raised in the module.

After watching and selecting an introductory video (Activity 1), students can examine one of the identified myths, misconceptions or issues. Teachers can also introduce here other myths and issues related to space. Students can be encouraged to recall existing understandings about space from their everyday life. The “fact videos” can be used in this step to highlight and broaden space-related topics, concepts, and principles. Selected parts from scientific background information can recur when necessary.

Activity 2 should help students to narrow down their chosen myth or issue into a hypothesis/research question that can be confirmed/answered during Activity 3. Activity 3 can be enacted in two ways:

1. through practical experience or
2. through theoretical investigation based on secondary evidence.

1. through practical experience

Students who choose a myth/issue that can be tested practically collect evidence through simple qualitative experiments. For example, let us consider a myth that “eating requires gravity for food to move to our stomach”.

Try it out with your body:

Take a mouthful of food, bend over until your head is below your stomach and swallow! You will find it is easy to do that despite the food going in the opposite direction to gravity. The passage of food through our bodies does not require gravity. A system of muscular gut contractions called “peristalsis” actively propels the food in the desired direction.

The system works that way also because our intestines loop around - sometimes going upwards instead of downwards. If gravity alone did the job, we would be unable to function. So, astronauts have no problems digesting food in a microgravity environment, as on ISS. We can also drink quite easily using a straw while hanging upside down. The hardest part of eating or drinking upside down is usually getting the food or drink to your mouth. Students can also be asked here to research astronauts' eating habits and space food.

Experience Rocket launches

(Activity can be done as a demonstration by the teacher).
This is related to principles or myths/misconceptions concerning rocket movement, for example, “Rockets need an atmosphere to push against to fly”.

A rocket creates thrust by expelling mass. When burned fuel flows out, the spaceship is accelerated in the opposite direction. This general principle of movement is the same as for a water rocket (Pressurised water with air is expelled from the PET bottle in the case of a water rocket).

Virtual experiments:

These experiments could help to collect evidence concerning several myths/misconceptions, for example, about rocket movement and gravity in outer space:

• "A spaceship needs a rocket engine working all the time on orbit (or on the way to Mars)."
• "There is no gravity in space."
• "Astronauts orbiting Earth on the ISS are weightless because they are far from Earth."

Teachers can choose what is more suitable for their class from various virtual experiments and simulations available on the Internet. We recommend materials from the PhET Interactive Simulations project, founded by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, that provides free simulations (PhET sims) to engage students to learn through exploration and discovery. For example, Gravity and Orbits interactive simulation can help to

• analyse the relationship between the Sun, Earth, Moon and space station;
• illustrate how gravity controls the motion of our solar system;
• explore the variables that affect the strength of gravity;
• predict how the motion would change if gravity were stronger or weaker.

Another virtual experiment that the students could test is Spaceflight Simulator which seeks to represent a vessel's behaviour under the influence of the laws of physics. This app allows the construction of different models of rockets. Students can see how the number of stages increases lifting capacity to different orbits.

2. through theoretical investigation based on secondary evidence

However, space-related myths and misconceptions can often not be busted (debunked) experimentally in the classroom. Therefore, students are expected to gather evidence from secondary sources to confirm or falsify their hypothesis/answer to their research question. By juxtaposing media/data sources and their content, students critically analyse their reliability and make justified conclusions based on the evidence. The student material is supplied with a tool that can be used for analysing the information. It would be good if the teacher could explain its use by demonstrating and analysing reliable and less reliable sources as examples before the students implement this tool on their own.

To communicate their findings, students are guided to present their conclusions visually (Activity 4). Video could be an exciting option. For this purpose, students can use a tutorial. Alternatively, students could make a poster or slides to show their findings.

Also, student material is provided with criteria (assessment tool) the visual presentation should fulfil when ready. These criteria can be used for self-assessment during the process and for peer assessment when presenting the results and answering the questions of their peers and the teacher (Activity 5).

In the last activity (Activity 6), socio-scientific issues and controversies related to space exploration will be debated ^[1]. For decades, scientists and policymakers have argued whether space exploration is better suited to humans or robots (see, for example, a recent book: “The End of Astronauts” by Donald Goldsmith and Martin, Rees Belknap Press, 2022). In Europe's harsh economic situation, this issue became even more actualised, as manned space flights are significantly more expensive than robotic—suggested debate role-play presented in the student material concerns this issue.

This activity allows students to think about why and how to explore Space. The activity supports students in debating a cross-disciplinary topic linked to physics, astronomy, biology, health and environmental studies and social sciences. This debate can provide students with insights into how scientists and professionals make and defend claims and deal with the uncertainty inherent in modern science and technology. Teachers can decide what kind of assessment to encourage the free expression of students’ ideas and arguments. The teacher can also serve as a moderator of the activity.

Relevant information is presented in the Scientific background information.

Suppose the teacher experiences a shortage of time for full-scale role-play activity. In that case, we can suggest, as an alternative, a shorter version of the Space Exploration Debate that could be implemented just during one lesson ^[2].

At the end of the module, the teacher can include a summing-up reflective activity about what the students have learned by participating in the module activities and how they collaborated, preparing arguments and presentations and providing feedback for the peers. Artistic reflections on Space by the art school students (see photography books and virtual exhibition) can show alternative ways of exploring space-related phenomena. They could serve as a point of departure for discussing what the students would wish to learn more in this area.