Theory
State the engineering choice you must justify. Stage intent: justify criterion.
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
Stop the tumble.
A spacecraft pushed out of a launcher is tumbling, and until that stops nothing else can happen. No pointing, no charging, no contact. Your team will try two ways of bringing the spin under control and find out that one of them makes things worse before it makes them better.
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: angle-time/performance plots + criterion-based recommendation.
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 is tumbling in space. Why can it not just grab something to stop?
- ✓ There is nothing to push against, so it has to use its own wheels
- · It could, if it moved slowly enough
- · It stops by itself after a while
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 light damping run peaks higher than it started and never settles. That is the mission - let learners find it in the chart.
- Never settling is a result, not missing data. Press learners who leave it blank.
- Keep this separate from the pointing mission: here the target is zero rotation, not a direction.
Can the learner describe the overshoot, and say why never settling matters for the rest of the mission?
Hold this line
- These results are produced by a model. Nothing here was measured on a real spacecraft.
- The disturbances and reference directions are controlled teaching values, not an orbit-derived environment.
- This lesson does not show that any real spacecraft would stabilise this way.
Home mission
Home mission: the swinging door
Push a door and try to stop it exactly half open, using only one hand and one push. Try it gently and firmly. Write down which overshot, which settled, and what that tells you about damping.
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.