What criteria do you think are important for assessing the habitability of a planetary body? Illustrate with reference to current or past missions in our solar system.

or

What is meant by the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone. Illustrate with reference to a current mission that looks outside our solar system.

A response paper communicates your intellectual reactions to an idea in the articles and papers we read for class. Much like a book review, the response paper usually provides your overall point of view regarding the material read. 

Browse the Drawdown solutions and pick one that interests you. Come prepared to class to present that solution, either informally (sitting at your seat and just talking) or formally (preparing some slides for class presentation, and/or some related material you have dug up on that solution). Your presentation might take 5 minutes or so.

In many fields, the journal (or sketchbook, field notebook, or lab book) is an important aid both to the process of research and discovery, and to the documentation of that process and its product, the findings, in more formal papers or books.

Your journal is a place to begin puzzling out some of the ideas that you will explore further in each of four assignments: Select A Site; Natural Processes; Change Over Time; and Traces and Trends. The first step in preparing to write the journal is to read the guide for that assignment: to familiarize yourself with what the assignment is asking you to do; to figure out what kind of background information and evidence you will need to accomplish that task. You will gather that information and evidence in class discussion, in the required readings, and on field trips.