Education
Cassiopeia: The Queen
Cassiopeia is a prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere which is very easily recognised as a W or M in the night skies. In most of Continental America and all of Europe it is visible year round but becomes most spectacular in the winter months, when it is elevated to a much higher altitude. Along …
Bulawa sisters are sending an experimental garden to ISS
We are Chicks in Space, a team of three sisters – MaryAnn Bulawa, Adia Bulawa and Lillith Bulawa – who are on a mission to help make future long term space missions possible. We have grown up working on NASA projects and challenges and in 2012 we participated in the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge. This challenge encourages high …
NASA Spinoff 2015: There’s more space in your life than you think
NASA technologies are being used to locate underground water in some of the driest places on the Earth, build quieter and more fuel-efficient airplanes, and create shock absorbers that brace buildings in earthquakes. The 2015 edition of NASA’s annual Spinoff publication highlights these and other technologies whose origins lie in space exploration, but now have …
Exploring the surface of a comet
On August 6, 2014 after a decade-long journey chasing its target, ESA’s Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, opening a new chapter in Solar System exploration. Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and Rosetta now lie 405 million kilometers from Earth, about half way between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, rushing towards …
Gliding a spaceship back to Earth
Vocabulary • Altitude: The distance a spacecraft is above a given point on the ground • Distance From Spaceport: The ground distance from the edge of the runway to the spacecraft • Glide Distance: The distance the Landing Laser measures to the spacecraft • Glide Slope (Ø): The angle a spacecraft makes to the horizontal …
The Chalkboard: SpaceShipOne curriculum connections
After reading the SpaceShipOne retrospective, ask students to respond to questions that require analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. These questions connect to the Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts Reading: Informational Text standards. How has SpaceShipOne made a difference in space travel? Or has it? Defend your response. The author concludes, “From suborbital flight to …
How to photograph the planets
For the last couple of issues our object spotlights have been located within our solar system. It is quite easy to see them, Jupiter and the Moon in particular, but quite difficult to image them. The term for imaging the solar system is Planetary Imaging despite the fact that both the planets, the moon and …
M16: The Eagle Nebula
The Eagle Nebula is located in the constellation Serpens and is one of the most iconic star forming regions in our galaxy. The nebula is also known as Messier 16 or M16 in the catalog of celestial nebulas and star clusters compiled by French Astronomer Charles Messier. This is probably one of the most famous …
SSEP: Sending student experiments to the ISS
On the morning of July 12, 2014, the Orbital Science Antares rocket sits on Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Island facility awaiting to be hopefully be launched at 12:52 p.m. that afternoon. On top of the rocket is Orbital’s Cygnus ORB-2 spacecraft packed with cargo bound for the International Space Station. The spacecraft has been …
MoonBots Challenge inspiring kids
The MoonBots Challenge is an interactive competition that emulates the real Google Lunar X Prize and increases students’ interests in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The challenge is considered a “game of skill” and is designed to help youth teams learn how to produce videos, create digital platforms, design playfields, program Lego Mindstorms robots, …