The Mission Starts in your Classroom!
We offer free curriculum designed to get you and your class ready for an exciting mission to outer space in the Challenger Learning Center!
Workshop Materials
TEKS Curriculum
Additional Curriculum
NASA Resources
CleanRoom PDF
Mission Preparation Manuals
After you book a mission, you should receive mission preparation material. It will contain a teacher packet, activity book, and your confirmation letter. You can download the teacher packet here.
Full Mission, Regular or Advanced
Mini Mission, Moon or Mars, Regular or Advanced
Junior Mission
If you do not receive preparation materials with a confirmation letter in the mail within 2 weeks of registration, call 713-639-4631.
Begin Your Training
A Challenger Center Mission is more than just a one-day field trip. The mission starts in your classroom and lasts long after the experience.
We recommend that you incorporate the mission preparation material into your daily curriculum to take advantage of the potential of this unique experience. Some of the activities go beyond science, such as team applications and designing a mission patch. At a minimum, your students should know what team they are on, what their duties will be, and have the proper name badge on when they arrive at the Challenger Center.
During the Challenger Mission we will work on many processing skills: communication, problem solving, teamwork, decision making, following instructions, etc. We do not focus on the concepts of science (such as phases of the moon, the solar system, rocketry, etc.) in the mission. This should be done in your classroom before and after the field trip.
Many teams will touch on these concepts in the mission, but each team has a different set of tasks. Therefore only a few students will experience a concept. This is why doing “astronaut training” before a mission is important. It gives all students an opportunity to be involved in all of the different science concepts. In other words, all students can train for a job and learn about it, but only a few will do it during the mission.
