This is Moscow This is Mars This is Moscow

A recent experiment in Russia replicated the experience of a space flight to Mars, even though the ‘cosmonauts’ never left Moscow!

In the experiment, six men were locked in a mock-up of a space ship for the time it would take them to travel to Mars and back. Five hundred and twenty days! The men had limited contact with the outside world but were not allowed to leave their ‘ship’ - a sealed unit with no windows. Any communication had a simulated time lag of 25 minutes to make it as realistic as possible. Both the psychological and physiological state of the men were constantly monitored.

Draw a timeline showing these events and other significant events that the cosmonauts missed while they were ‘in space’. Make sure the scale of your timeline is accurate. The crew entered the ‘space ship’ on 3 June 2010 and left it again on 4 November 2011. What did they miss? 11 June - 11 July 2010 football world cup 14 October 2010 last Chilean miner rescued after 70 days trapped underground 29 April 2011 Royal Wedding 15 July 2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows released in cinemas

Mars500 mission Description Prompts and probing questions Extension This resource asks students to explore ratio and proportion in the context of drawing a timeline. Prompts and probing questions The PowerPoint introduces the context of the Mars500 mission in which six Russian ‘cosmonauts’ were locked into a mock-up of a space ship in Moscow for the 520 days it would take them to make the return journey to Mars. Students are asked to draw a scaled timeline showing important events that the cosmonauts missed during their ‘journey’. Prompts and questions that you might consider include: (if giving the choice) What would be a good length to use for the timeline? How many cm on your line is a day? A week? A year? What units will you work in? Are days, weeks or months the easiest unit for you? Why? What important events in your life did they miss? How long would your line have to be for you to be able to accurately mark the start time of the Royal Wedding (the service started at 12 minutes past 11)? Extension To challenge the more able students, you might set them an awkward length of line that they must use (while for the less able you could offer a suggestion which will make the task relatively straight forward. For most students, deciding on a suitable length will form part of the challenge of the activity). You might like to set the length to be the length of a wall in your classroom and mark the events on this (maybe the extra length will allow added accuracy and mean your timeline can be accurate to hours rather than days!). Assessment If you use the APP model of assessment then the areas to assess could include: solve word problems and investigations from a range of contexts (using and applying mathematics level 5) solve problems involving ratio and direct proportion (using and applying mathematics level 6).