The activity, "What is a Planet?" was developed by staff at MSU's Burns Technology Center as part of a NASA-funded outreach grant. The activity focuses on the unmanned New Horizons spacecraft, which was launched in January 2006 on a nine-year, 3-billion-mile, one-way trip to Pluto.

The activity is designed for grades 9 through 12 and helps students learn about the characteristics of planets, comets, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects through a classification activity.

The students can then apply what they have learned by participating in a formal debate about a hypothetical solar system object discovered by the New Horizons spacecraft and by defining the term "planet."

Keri Garber-Hallau, of the Burns Technology Center and one of the developers of the program, said the NASA selection means that teachers around the U.S. can access the activity online and photocopy it at OfficeMax for half price. The copies can be mailed or picked up from a local store.

The activity is designed as a lesson plan for teachers, but anyone can access and view the activity online. Go to: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/ and search for "What is a Planet?" using the quotation marks.

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