Learn about the Mars 2020 NASA launch with this incredible activity book for kids! Excited about the future of space travel? This book is packed with Mars Rover history and engaging content about both upcoming, and previous missions to the Red Planet. Written for kids ages 7-12+, there are plenty of fun activities such as word puzzles, hidden pictures, STEM/STEAM coloring pages, and fun step-by-step drawing tutorials. Travel through the solar system and learn incredible NASA facts, Mars trivia, and uncover the ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian history behind the early discovery of our closest planetary neighbor. With the next mission to Mars scheduled to launch in the summer of 2020, children and students can use this book to travel through space and time!

NASA's space and Earth science program is composed of two principal components: spaceflight projects and mission-enabling activities. Most of the budget of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is applied to spaceflight missions, but NASA identifies nearly one quarter of the SMD budget as "mission enabling." The principal mission-enabling activities, which traditionally encompass much of NASA's research and analysis (R&A) programs, include support for basic research, theory, modeling, and data analysis; suborbital payloads and flights and complementary ground-based programs; advanced technology development; and advanced mission and instrumentation concept studies. While the R&A program is essential to the development and support of NASA's diverse set of space and Earth science missions, defining and articulating an appropriate scale for mission-enabling activities have posed a challenge throughout NASA's history. This volume identifies the appropriate roles for mission-enabling activities and metrics for assessing their effectiveness. Furthermore, the book evaluates how, from a strategic perspective, decisions should be made about balance between mission-related and mission-enabling elements of the overall program as well as balance between various elements within the mission-enabling component. Collectively, these efforts will help SMD to make a good program even better.