Supported by UK Space Agency
Planet party planners
Choose a wacky world and then plan it a party as we compare the fun factor of other heavenly bodies to Earth.
You’ll need
- Big pieces of paper
- Coloured pens or pencils
- Sticky tack
- Scissors
- Tables
- Chairs
Satellite pictures of worlds
PDF – 4.3MB
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough helpers for each team to have one. You may need some parents and carers to help out if you’re short on helpers.
Planning this activity
- Print and cut out the images from the ‘Satellite pictures of worlds’. You’ll need one set of images for each group. The names of each astronomical body should be removed. You can find more images in the NASA and Airbus galleries.
- Set out tables and chairs for each group, with writing/drawing materials and paper. Set up another table with the cut-out images, with each group’s images in a stack.
Party planning
- Split everyone into groups of about five and give each group one pair of their cut-out images, either the Moon, the Earth or Mars.
- Groups should examine the images they’ve been given and try to work out which planet or astronomical body they’re looking at. Everyone should consider visible features, such as craters, valleys and volcanoes, while making their decisions.
- See who was able to identify the object in their images and how they did this.
- Place a set of the images, such as stuck onto a wall, so that each one is visible to everybody.
- Go through the distinguishing features that made each astronomical body recognisable. We've included some information at the bottom of the page, but you could also discuss:
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- How could these features have been created?
- What is the atmosphere like on each planet/astronomical body?
- Lay out each set of images on a group table. Someone from each group should select an image at random.
- Each group should plan a party or holiday on the astronomical body they’ve chosen. They should bear in mind the features visible on each image and those discussed earlier, and think about how those features could be used to their advantage to plan a party that’s fun. Some ideas might be: downhill racing on the slopes of Mars craters, trampolining on the Moon with reduced gravity or water sports on Earth, where there’s lots of water.
- Give everyone 20 minutes to plan and write out their party proposal. Encourage everyone to be as creative as they like, and refer to their image throughout, especially if the party’s moving between different locations. Instructions, lists, pictures and diagrams could all be used to show what the party will be like.
- When everyone’s finished their proposal, have each group present their idea to the rest of the group. They should explain how their party makes best use of their location and why everyone should come along to join in the fun.
- If they like, groups could vote on their favourite party and favourite overall party location.
- Earth Observation (EO) scientists collect information about all of the Earth, including land, sea and atmosphere, using sensors carried on satellites, aircraft, ships, buoys floating in the ocean, and thousands of weather stations around the world.
- There’s now a lot of data available and scientists are finding more ways to use it to study our planet and make predictions about its future.
- The International Space Station provides a unique perspective from which we can monitor environmental processes and change. For example, satellite images can show the damage to an area caused by a forest fire or a tsunami.
- Mars is approximately half the size of Earth.
- Your weight on Mars would only be about a third of your weight on Earth.
- Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system: Olympus Mons is 21 km high and 600 km wide!
- Mars is also home to the largest canyon in the solar system: Valles Marineris is over 3000 km long and in places is 600 km wide!
- Mars has only a slightly longer day than Earth, but a year is almost twice as long.
- The temperature on Mars varies between 20 °C (like summer in the United Kingdom) and −153 °C (the coldest temperature ever recorded in the UK is −27.2 °C, and the lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is −89.2 °C).
- Mars has a very thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide.
- The Moon is almost 4 times smaller than Earth.
- Your weight on the Moon would only be about a sixth of your weight on Earth.
- The Moon has almost no atmosphere at all, so astronauts need a spacesuit to breathe and protect them.
- The Moon is like a desert with rocky and dusty plains, mountains and valleys. It has many craters, which were made when space rocks hit the surface at a high speed.
- It can get very hot in the sun, almost 130 °C (water boils at 100 °C), but very cold in the shade, almost −170 °C (most freezers have a temperature of −18 °C).
- Planet features are details such as craters, valleys and volcanoes.
- A crater is a bowl-shaped impression, or hollowed-out area, produced by the impact of a meteorite, volcanic activity or a surface explosion.
- Valleys are commonly found on Earth, and are formed by erosion. This is the gradual wearing down of the land by wind and water.
- A volcano is formed by a planet losing its internal heat. They form where rock near the surface becomes hot enough to melt.
- A planet’s atmosphere is a blanket of layered gases surrounding a planet.
- The atmosphere can be divided into layers based on its temperature. These layers are the ‘troposphere’, the ‘stratosphere’, the ‘mesosphere’ and the ‘thermosphere’.
Reflection
Planning your own party in a different world will have helped you see how different it is to the world we live in. What was the most difficult environment to throw a party in, assuming all the necessities (tasty fruit punch, invitations, oxygen) were catered for?
You had to communicate and work as a team to come up with the most suitable idea for your location. How did you listen to each other to do this? Were there any challenges you had to overcome to do this? If so, how did you overcome them?
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
- Scissors
Supervise young people appropriately when they’re using scissors. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.
More satellite images of planets and heavenly bodies could be added to make this activity more diverse and detailed.
- If you have access to more equipment to produce party plans, make use of it. Some people may prefer to produce a presentation on a device or computer.
- Make sure groups split the task between them, assigning each person a role in creating the party plan and delivering the presentation. Anyone not comfortable speaking in front of everyone could focus more on planning the party itself, locations, logistics and activity ideas.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
Have a conversation with everyone about what it would take to move to another planet permanently. Talk about the challenges they would face and how they’d overcome these. Get everyone to come up with a plan of how they’d move there, and how they’d set up infrastructure, food, water and atmosphere.
Everyone could suggest their own planets or heavenly bodies to plan parties for. Make sure they bring along satellite images of them for reference.