Skip to content

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

NASA kit allows kids to build their own Mars rover!

Free World Class Education
FREE Catholic Classes
Kits are affordable and make technology accessible to kids.

In an attempt to connect with youth, NASA has partnered with New York-based littleBits to create do-it-yourself kits that allow kids -or enthusiastic adults to create mini NASA projects including a working miniature Mars rover.

Highlights

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
4/25/2014 (9 years ago)

Published in Technology

Keywords: NASA, littleBits, Space Kit, science

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - NASA in a bid to connect with kids, has pioneered littleBits, a kit that kids can buy online and use to assemble their own mini rovers and other scientific instruments. The Space Kit, as it is branded, comes with small lego-style components that connect magnetically to one another and work together.

NASA hopes that as kids play with the devices they learn more about what NASA does and how to engineer their own projects.

A historic canonization. Get your commemorative here.

NASA says the equipment will lake kids take measurements of the atmosphere, of light and can be used to make a working model satellite. It's simply a matter of stringing the components together in a logical manner.

The kits come with manuals which teach you how to build different devices, and kids are invited to experiment and build their own contraptions.

Certain components do not come with the kit and need to be upcycled from household items, such as plastic bottles, wheels, and frames for various contraptions.

The project has been 18 months in development and was intended to make NASA research more accessible to kids. The secret was writing technical manuals that explain how sophisticated technology works in simple, easy to understand terms.

The components that come in each kit are modeled after actual working components which NASA uses in various instruments, but they are simplified. They remain functional and can take basic measurements allowing kids to do their own science research projects at home or at school.

The kits range in price between $99 to $199 and the pieces are interchangeable.

The littleBits kits are a natural evolution of a simplification trend. Already, cellphones provide off-the-shelf technology for college-level students to develop science projects that range from weather balloon instrumentation to actual micro-satellites. LittleBits will make the same kind of tinkering normally reserved for college-level engineering students accessible to younger kids.

---


'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'


Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Join the Movement
When you sign up below, you don't just join an email list - you're joining an entire movement for Free world class Catholic education.

Lent logo
Saint of the Day logo

Catholic Online Logo

Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of Catholic Online and are protected under U.S. and International copyright laws, © Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. Any unauthorized use, without prior written consent of Catholic Online is strictly forbidden and prohibited.

Catholic Online is a Project of Your Catholic Voice Foundation, a Not-for-Profit Corporation. Your Catholic Voice Foundation has been granted a recognition of tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Federal Tax Identification Number: 81-0596847. Your gift is tax-deductible as allowed by law.