Bring the excitement of a Challenger Learning Center mission directly to your classroom or learning community!

Our virtual mission simulations are ideal for groups who are in the classroom, hybrid, virtual, or who are unable to visit the McAuliffe Center. We offer the following engaging virtual missions that are delivered directly to your students through Zoom.

During the live virtual missions, each student takes on a specific job in Mission Control on Earth. By directing the Mission Commander, they work independently at a self-pace and collaboratively with classmates.

Destination Moon
Grades 5-6

A team of researchers is ready to return to the Moon to explore its surface and establish a second habitat for astronauts to live and work! To get there, they’ll launch and fly Blue Origin’s reusable launch vehicle, New Glenn, and explore the Moon’s surface using Blue Origin’s lunar lander, Blue Moon.

Student teams in Mission Control have a critical job: initiate the launch of New Glenn into orbit to land Blue Moon safely on the lunar surface. While in orbit, teams monitor for potentially dangerous space weather and space debris, conduct safety checks on the spacecraft systems, deploy and monitor satellites, and launch payloads.

Requirements: access to the internet, a device with a camera, Google Chrome browser.
Duration: minimum 45 minutes - maximum 75 minutes 
Cost: starting at $100 for up to a class of 20
Participants per mission: minimum of 10; suggested maximum of 30

Program Request Form

Currently Not Offered
Destination Mars
Grades 3-4

Researchers are ready to explore Mars, but there’s one glaring problem – more than 40 million miles separate Earth from the Red Planet. This distance makes it impossible to travel back and forth between the two planets while completing our research. We need to build a base on one of the Red Planet’s moons, Deimos or Phobos, that will allow us to send a spacecraft to the surface of Mars and back in the fastest and safest way possible. Student teams will select which moon is best to build a base by analyzing three sets of data collected by rovers on Deimos and Phobos.

Requirements: access to the internet, a device with a camera, Google Chrome browser.
Duration: minimum 45 minutes - maximum 60 minutes 
Cost: starting at $100 for up to a class of 20
Participants per mission: minimum of 10; suggested maximum of 30

Currently Not Offered
Mars Sample Return
Grades 9-12

It is the year 2029. In 2020, the Perseverance Rover collected rock samples from the Mars surface and left them in tubes at "depot" locations on the planet. Now, it's your students’ job to direct the Mars Sample Fetch Rover to retrieve the maximum number of sample tubes in the shortest time possible. Once the samples return to the Mars Ascent Vehicle, they can be launched to Earth for further study.

While orbiters, landers, and rovers have done some exploration of the Martian environment, only sophisticated laboratories on Earth can perform the precision analysis required to answer the most important questions about Mars. This is an important step in assessing whether Mars can (or could) support life and as a prerequisite for human landings on the Red Planet!

Original virtual mission produced by the Christa McAuliffe Center

Requirements: access to the internet, a device with a camera, Google Chrome browser.
Duration: minimum 60 minutes - maximum 75 minutes 
Cost: starting at $100 for up to a class of 20
Participants per mission: minimum of 4; suggested maximum of 24