Meteorite or Meteor-wrong?

The aim of the project is to produce a virtual reality meteorite collecting trip, set in a hot desert environment. The audience at whom the activity is directed is primarily school students from Years 5 - 11 (Age 9 - 16; Key Stages 2-4), although other audiences will also be encouraged through Open University websites.

Using the activity as a framework, we will:
(i) introduce meteorites as fragments from asteroids, the Moon and Mars, study of which can help us to understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System
(ii) discuss the complementary nature of materials returned directly from space missions with those found on earth as meteorites
(iii) consider the necessity of meteorite curation, the importance of planetary protection and the legacy value of meteorite collections for future research


The overall impact of the project will be to increase scientific literacy in the targeted students, introducing them to various concepts, including the notion of great ages and vast distances, how looking at small fragments of an object can yield information about major events and how analysing rocks from space can help us understand the Earth. Students will also be expected to acquire skills in team-working, effective communication, note-taking and record keeping, as well as fieldwork skills of equipment selection, distance and direction measurement and landmark identification.

We will announce the availability of the resource through social media (Facebook, Twitter, What'sApp, etc.), as well as advertising through professional organisations (including, but not limited to: STFC, UK Space Agency, Royal Astronomical Society, Geological Society, Assoc. for Science Education, Earth Science Teachers' Association, etc.).

There are several specific openings which will be employed to target audiences for the activity:

(a) The activity is designed to be complementary to the Moon and Meteorite Teaching Packages (MMTP; http://www.stfc.ac.uk/public-engagement/borrow-the-moon/) that the STFC lends to schools and other bodies

(b) The OpenScience Laboratory (OSL; http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/open-science/) is an initiative of the Open University and the Wolfson Foundation. It is an online hub of practical science experiments that enables students to conduct investigations using real data. The Meteorite - or Meteor-Wrong? activity would be an additional experiment within the OSL

(c) As part of its mandate to widen participation in education, the OU has a site dedicated to provision of free learning resources (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/#). The site links to taster packages designed to attract people into (or back into) higher education. The proposed activity would be a stand-alone package on the OpenLearn site, linking to our teaching materials in astronomy and planetary sciences, physics and engineering

(d) Some of the impetus to build the Meteorite - or Meteor-Wrong? activity has come from an EU Horizon 2020-funded project, Euro-Cares (European Curation of Astromaterials Returned from Exploration of Space; http://www.euro-cares.eu/), to develop a roadmap for a European Sample Curation Facility (ESCF). The activity would also be a stand-alone resource alongside the other educational material that will be available through the Euro-Cares website.