The challenges have been designed to be inherently interesting and motivating for students. Each challenge invites students working in teams to design, build, test, evaluate, re-design, and re-build a model related to the work of NASA engineers. As they reflect upon the performance of their designs and move gradually toward better design solutions, they learn important science content, exercise mathematical concepts and skills, and improve their thinking and analytical skills. As a culmination of their work, each team prepares a poster summarizing and communicating the process and results of their work.

Each design challenge supports the science education goals defined in the National Science Education Standards.

The educator resource guide for each challenge (downloadable as a PDF file) includes all the information you need to conduct the challenge in your classroom. Each challenge involves 6 or 7 class periods and 4-8 hours of teacher preparation time.