Swift Planet Mercury

List TWO reasons why Earth erases its craters while Mercury's craters stay preserved forever:

Reason 1:

Reason 2:

6 NASA Engineering Lab: Design a Mercury Rover

Imagine NASA selects you to design the first wheeled rover to drive on Mercury's rocky surface. In the workspace below, sketch or describe three specific features your rover must have to survive (for example: extreme heat shield, cold heaters, solar power, or rock wheels).

Feature 1:

Feature 2:

Feature 3:

Swift Planet Mercury • Student Activity Log Page 2 of 2

Section 1: Mission Briefing (Word Bank)

a. Mercury is the smallest planet... closest to the Sun.

b. It takes Mercury only 88 days to orbit the Sun.

c. One full rotation takes about 59 days.

d. Lacks a protective atmosphere... scarred by asteroid craters.

Section 3: The Missing Blanket Mystery (Atmosphere)

Exemplary Student Response: "Earth's thick atmosphere acts like an insulating blanket that traps heat overnight. Mercury has virtually no atmosphere, so as soon as night falls, all the heat absorbed during the day radiates straight out into the vacuum of space, plunging the temperature to -290°F."

Section 4: The Hottest Planet Showdown

Correct Answer: B (Venus has a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere that traps heat like an intense greenhouse).
Follow-up Explanation: An atmosphere regulates temperature by holding in thermal energy; without it, solar heat cannot be retained.

Section 5: Geology Detective (Crater Preservation)

Acceptable Reason 1: No wind, rain, running water, or glaciers to cause weathering and erosion.

Acceptable Reason 2: No active plate tectonics or active volcanoes to resurface the crust and bury old craters.

Section 6: Mercury Rover Scoring Criteria (3 Points Total)

• 1 Pt: Heat Protection: Thermal reflective shielding, gold foil insulation, or heat radiators to withstand +800°F.

• 1 Pt: Cold Protection: Radioisotope heater units or battery warming systems to survive -290°F nights.

• 1 Pt: Terrain/Mobility: Rugged non-pneumatic metal mesh wheels or treads for sharp rocky crater rims and steep basins.

Differentiation & Scaffolding Strategies

For Emerging Learners / ELL: Provide sentence starters for Section 3 ("Mercury gets cold at night because it does not have a ___ to trap ___."). Allow labeling of rover sketches with single words.

For Advanced Explorers: Ask students to calculate how many Mercury years pass in a human's lifetime (e.g. 10 Earth years = approx. 41 Mercury years!). Research NASA's MESSENGER findings of water ice in craters.

Swift Planet Mercury • Instructional Guide Page 2 of 2