Theory
State the engineering choice you must justify. Stage intent: justify a recovery choice.
For teachers
Prepare a mission
Everything you need to run the lesson: the prompts for this academic depth, the diagnostic answer key, the misconceptions to watch for, and the truth boundary to hold.
Choose the mission and depth
From launcher to first contact.
The moment a CubeSat leaves the launcher it is tumbling, cold and silent. Before it can do anything useful it has to stop spinning, find the Sun to charge, turn its antenna towards Earth and get a message through. Your team will run that sequence and work out which step is holding the whole mission back.
Pilot lesson
What to say at Grade 8
These prompts come from the academic layer, so they change with the depth you selected.
Prediction
Predict which option better satisfies the named criterion.
Running the Twin
Use the Twin to gather comparison evidence for your justification. Runtime remains the frozen Twin; this plan does not execute physics.
Checkpoint
Check that your evidence actually supports the criterion.
Analysis
Justify the choice and name at least one model limitation. Evidence intent: mission-state timeline + subsystem/dependency explanation.
Engineering decision
Select and defend an engineering option for this mission question.
Limitation
Name at least one frozen-model limitation that this experiment cannot answer.
Provenance
Keep simulated, simulated_sensor, estimator_state, derived, reference, and measured distinct. Never label simulated as measured.
Diagnostic answer key
A spacecraft does well on four steps out of five, but fails the fifth. What happens to the mission?
- ✓ It is in trouble - every step has to work
- · It succeeds, because most steps went well
- · It half succeeds
Timing
One session. Adjust freely — the sequence matters more than the clock.
| When | Stage | What you are doing |
|---|---|---|
| 0–10 min | Mission brief and outcomes | Set the mission question and the success criterion. |
| 10–20 | Diagnostic | Surface prior ideas. No score — this is for you, not them. |
| 20–35 | Visual theory | Work the concept visual. Ask for the idea in their own words. |
| 35–45 | Prediction | Every learner commits in writing before any run. |
| 45–60 | Twin investigation | Baseline first, then the candidate case. |
| 60–70 | Evidence and decision | Compare, choose, and state one limitation. |
| 70–80 | Assessment and result | Formative only. Collect the written reasoning. |
| Home | Home mission | Software-only extension. No hardware, no account. |
Facilitation and the truth boundary
While they work
- The overall score is high and the mission still does not complete. Let learners hit that contradiction themselves before you name it.
- Push back on any answer that quotes the overall score. The question is which step limits the chain.
- Attitude phases use the F1 one-axis training twin; power, contact, payload and anomaly phases are teaching simulations. Say so if a learner asks how real this is.
Can the learner name the limiting step, and explain why a good overall score does not mean the mission worked?
Hold this line
- These mission results are produced by a model. No spacecraft was deployed and no contact was made.
- Only the attitude phases use the hardware-informed one-axis training twin; the power, contact, payload and anomaly phases are teaching-grade simulations.
- This lesson does not show that any real spacecraft would survive deployment or reach first contact.
Home mission
Home mission: the weakest link
Think of a morning routine with five steps that all have to happen before you leave the house. Write them down, then mark the one that most often makes you late. Write one sentence on why fixing a different step would not help.
Tell us what did not work
Ten questions, answered locally. Nothing is submitted or tracked — you download the file and send it if you want to.
Informal educator feedback
This local-first form contains the ten approved pilot-review questions. It does not submit, track, or store data remotely. Optional name/contact should be handled outside this form only if a reviewer volunteers it.