Rosetta and Education
In March 2004, ESA’s Rosetta mission started its 10-year interplanetary trip towards a historic encounter with comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Since then, the whole world has been holding its breath and waiting for unprecedented events in the history of space exploration: a spacecraft following a comet at close range while it is heading towards the inner Solar System, and will release a lander to directly study its rugged and irregular surface including drilling its interior… hopefully discovering the secrets of the formation of the Solar System itself.
Just like previous space missions that have landed on the Moon, Mars, and Titan, Rosetta has the power to inspire an entire generation. Youngsters in particular may find in Rosetta not only a trigger for their imagination about space and humankind’s origins, but also a source of attraction towards the scientific and engineering challenges behind the Rosetta mission.
Since inspirational teaching is at the base of successful learning, the ESA Education team has decided to leverage on this unique source of inspiration. A number of tools are provided for primary and secondary school teachers to trigger their students’ interest in the Rosetta mission and in the exploration of space in general. This includes teaching resources and information for use in the classroom to run STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curricular activities.
The 'Teach with Rosetta' website has been created to be the central hub for such resources and material. It will grow with time, hosting new ESA education resources and links to Rosetta news as they become available during the course of the Rosetta mission, until its end in 2015.
Visit these pages and don’t miss the chance to teach with ESA and Rosetta!