The Brown Bag STEM Challenge- Lunar Landers

Lunar Landers  teaches students to design, build and test an out of this world (sorry, I just couldn’t resist!) lander that will protect its astronauts. It is also one of my favorite activities for STEM professional development!  Lunar Landers allows students to experiment with the engineering design process while learning about force and motion.

“Astronauts” are placed in their lunar lander and are dropped from a pre-determined height.  Students must use the other provided supplies to cushion their landing and cause the astronauts to remain in the cabin. (Think about this as a version of an Egg Drop challenge…but more fun and less messy.)

As students progress through the challenge, they test their designs and note the status of the astronauts.  Students should strive for a design in which both astronauts stay in the cup.

The Brown Bag STEM Challenge bundle pack includes 10 high-interest design challenges that use low-cost materials that (almost all) fit into a brown bag!  Challenges comes complete with design briefs, STEM notebook pages and a PDF slide deck. In each challenge, students work in teams to design, build and test solutions, following NGSS Engineering Design Performance Expectations.

Get the Brown Bag STEM Challenge Bundle Pack with 10 Design Challenges including Lunar Landers!