A study published this spring in the journal Nature Geoscience made headlines with its evidence suggesting that the moon may be tectonically active. Inspired by this new research, this lesson plan from Science Friday asks students to examine seismic data collected by several of NASA's Apollo missions, as well as high-resolution images of the moon's surface that were captured more recently by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC; featured in the 7-19-2019 Scout Report). The students' objective is to use this evidence to weigh whether future crewed missions to the lunar surface need to be concerned about the possibility of moonquakes and to make a recommendation to NASA accordingly. This lesson plan was written with students in grades 6-10 in mind and is estimated to take approximately 1-2 hours. Interested earth science teachers can download the entire lesson plan as a PDF and as a Microsoft Word document. While the majority of the lesson can be completed offline, it should be noted that students will need internet access to view the LROC images. Published in July 2019, this lesson was written by Science Friday's education director Ariel Zych and aligns with several Next Generation Science Standards.
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