All life forms on Earth are based on organic biochemistry. This activity requires students to analyse an unknown soil sample (just recovered from a space mission to another planet!) and look for signs of possible indicators for life. Curriculum areas covered:

• Cell biology
• Food tests, including...

This is one of a series of resources to support the use of the BBC micro:bit. This resource focusses on pupils designing, programming and using a BBC micro:bit to complete the mission challenge to find out more about the planet Mars.

In this activity pupils will make use of the BBC micro:bit to design and...

These four videos discuss life in our Solar System - 

What lies under the ice of...

If there is life elsewhere in our solar system it’s likely to live in a pretty cold environment. In this resource, students investigate the effect of antifreeze on the freezing point of water and how it can allow fragile cells to survive extreme cold. In the video, Judith Green explains how students can plan an...

Could there be life on Mars? Perhaps so, although the high intensity of UV light means that it is unlikely to be found on the surface. The experiment demonstrates how bacteria grown on agar plates can be killed off by UV exposure. Curriculum areas covered:

• Microbiology
• Cell biology
• ...

A collection of four videos dedicated to interviewing leading ESA space research scientists on a variety of different lunar topics including:

• Making use of resources on the moon
• 3D...

Mission X is an international educational challenge that focuses on health, science, fitness and nutrition and encourages pupils to train like an astronaut. The challenge involves a set of physical and educational activities, developed by space scientists and fitness professionals working with real astronauts. Each...

This resource has been developed to support the Mission X: Train Like An Astronaut challenge from the European Space Agency. 

It focuses on essential skills, such as listening, speaking, teamwork, problem solving, leadership, aiming high,...

This activity summary guide should be used alongside the Mission X challenge.

This resource is from the Mission X collection of activities which is an international educational challenge that focuses on health, science, fitness and nutrition, and encourages pupils to train like an astronaut. To find out...

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is an animated video, teacher guidance and pupil activities that explore some of the challenges that exist for getting astronauts to Mars, and what it would be like to live there for a while....

The cell is the smallest unit of life and for many millennia single celled organisms were the only form of life on Earth. It’s this type of life that astrobiologists are looking for elsewhere in the solar system. In this activity, wallpaper paste is used to build model cells Curriculum areas covered:

• ...

These secondary level resources support the Moon Camp Challenge.

The Moon Camp Challenge is an educational and inspirational project run by ESA and Airbus Foundation, in partnership with Autodesk. These supporting classroom activities focus on learning-by-design and science experimentation. Students will develop a number of scientific experiments related to the Moon and apply...

National Moon day commemorates the day in 1969 when the astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first person to step on the Moon. This was a ground breaking moment for human-kind.

The resources in this list use the Moon to teach about various topics including:

• the phases of the Moon
• light and...

The Inventive podcast uses storytelling to encourage listeners to find out more about engineers and what they do.  In each episode, Professor Trevor Cox interviews an engineer, and then a writer uses that interview as inspiration for a piece of fiction. The podcast brings...