Description
Part I: Astrobiology Discoveries
Discoveries are being made every week in astrobiology, and for this assignment I want you to read about several of them and report on what you think is the most interesting/exciting. Use these sources to find the most important recent discoveries:
News & Features – Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System (nasa.gov)
News & Discoveries | Astrobiology (nasa.gov)
Astrobiology – Welcome to the Astrobiology Web
Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover – NASA Mars
Astrobiology – Welcome to the Astrobiology Web
Read several recent articles (must be published after 2022 Dec 15). Then choose your favorite, and in one paragraph summarize the article and state the key results. Explain why the article is important – why is this newsworthy? Try to answer the usual “Who, What, When, Where, Why?” set of questions. Then in a second paragraph, state what made the article interesting to you. Reserve your own thoughts/opinions for the second paragraph. Be sure to give the title and date of the article at the start of your answer. As usual, proper college-level English is required. The assignment length should be one page. (I don’t care about font size, spacing, etc – you know what looks good and what does not. Please try to keep this to 1 side of a piece of paper.) Be sure to keep the summary of what the author wrote (first paragraph) separate from your opinions & thoughts (second paragraph). Since you are listing the title and date at the top of your homework, there is no need to have a separate reference or citations section. However, please also include the URL (web address), and the author of the article (if given).
Part II: Textbook Questions
“Quick Quiz” questions from the textbook. These multiple choice questions are worth 5 points total:
Ch1 #1,2,4,7 ; Ch2 #8 ; Ch3 #1,6,9,10 ; Ch11 #1
Just listing the letter choice is okay – no need to write out the question. In fact, I prefer if you do not write out the question, as it is easier to grade if you don’t. Please do NOT explain your reasoning for the answer. Put your answers on a separate page after Part I.
Upload your homework to Canvas in .pdf format, in one (and only one) file, i.e., combine all your work into one document.
Extra Credit 1 (worth up to 3 points): The Voyager Mission is NASA’s longest-lived mission Links to an external site.- it has been going 45 years as of 2022! Explore the web page NASA’s Voyager Mission Status Links to an external site.and write a brief description of what you see and what you learned. Connect what you learn on this website with what we discussed about the Voyager 1 Mission in Lecture #3. [As always, be sure to include the name of the web pages and the URLs that you use. If you omit this critical information, you cannot earn full credit.] If you choose to do the extra credit, include your answer in the same document as the homework; just write you answer after the Part II multiple-choice questions.
