Tag Archives: NASA

Three Resources for Exploring our Solar System

January 10, 2013, 9:37 am • Posted by Jessica Neely
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photo by Rrinsindika/Wikimedia Commons

What does the start of a new year bring besides resolutions? The beginning of another orbit of the Earth around the sun! Use this timely hook to explore the solar system. Not surprisingly, NASA has cornered the market on high-quality, free astronomy teaching resources. Here are just a few of our favorite NASA education sites.

NASA Solar System Education
A national team of educators and scientists worked together to create this one-stop shop for NASA solar system exploration education resources. Activities, background information, career exploration, lesson plans, experiments and mission details can be accessed by grade level, curriculum standard, mission or theme.

Do It Yourself Podcast
NASA's Do-It-Yourself Podcast activity sets the stage for students to host a show that features astronauts doing experiments on the International Space Station or NASA experts explaining scientific concepts. NASA provides a set of audio and video clips along with links to images and information about a STEM-related topic. Students can choose as many items as they want to include in a project and download them to their computer. Students can use the information provided or conduct their own research to write a script for an audio or video production.

NASA Kids’ Club
A new offering from NASA, the Kids’ Club features games, interactive activities, and images for students to explore, play, and learn from. At the center of the NASA Kids' Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in "Airplane High Low" to more difficult tasks like identifying planets based on some clues provided in prompts in "Go to the Head of the Solar System."

Filed under: 6 -12 Science, K-5 Science, Science
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Five Resources for Soaring to Space

January 9, 2013, 9:41 am • Posted by Almetria Vaba
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Space exploration allows for an interdisciplinary moment between science and social studies. Use these 5 PBS LearningMedia resources to add richness and depth to your lessons.  PBS LearningMedia has thousands more classroom-ready media to enhance classroom learning.

1.  Hubble’s Expanding Universe Video(4:14) Grades:  6-12

Use this video and accompanying support material to spark astronomy fascination among your students featuring a view into Edwin Hubble’s discoveries: galaxies outside of our own and the constantly expanding universe.

2. Building Curiosity: Rover Rocks Rocker-Bogie Video (2:00) Grades: 9-12

Use this NASA video to show a behind-the-scenes view of how NASA engineers designed Curiosity to be sturdy but light and to be highly maneuverable and stable. Curiosity is NASA’s Mars rover that will, over a 23-month mission, collect and analyze Martian soil and rock samples.

3.  Mass vs. Weight: Introduction Video (5:42) Grades: 6-12

In this video from NASA's Teaching From Space initiative, two astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) describe mass and weight and the differences between the two. Embedded animations and demonstrations support the video's learning goals and are highly entertaining.

4. Life on Mars? Video (2:59) Grades: 6-12

With this video and additional support material, invite your class to ponder the mysteries of water on Mars. Assess the clues and learn the facts behind the discovery of ice on the red planet. Delve into the question: Could evidence of life exist in buried ice?

5. Gabriela Talks to an Astronaut Video (2:10) Grades: Pre-K-1

Use this video to how your young students how astronauts train and what astronauts do. Your class will learn directly from an astronaut engineer who helps build and fix things in space.

 

Filed under: PBS LearningMedia
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Do Now #14: Earth-Like Planet

January 6, 2012, 5:20 pm • Posted by Andrea Swensrud
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To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDedspace and end it with #KQEDDoNow

For more info on how to use Twitter, click here.

Do Now

Do you think it is important for scientists to be searching for signs of extraterrestrial life?  Why or why not?

Intro

On December 5, 2011, NASA announced the discovery of a planet in a “habitable zone”—a region around a star that is the right temperature (not too hot and not too cold) for liquid water to exist.  This planet, called Kepler-22b, is the first to be found that approximates Earth in its size and distance from its sun.

The purpose of NASA’s Kepler Mission is to survey part of the Milky Way galaxy to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone and figure out how many of the stars in our galaxy have planets like this.  This is done using a specially-designed spacecraft telescope (called “Kepler”). The Kepler mission will last a minimum of 3 ½ years and costs about $600 million.

The SETI Institute is a non-profit organization with the mission of searching for signs of extra terrestrial life.  It has been in existence since 1985 and manages the Allen Telescope Array, This grouping of telescopes, located in Shasta County, California, searches our galaxy and other galaxies for radio signals that would suggest that life exists elsewhere in the Universe.

Resource

NPR segment Found: Earth-Like Planet That Might Be Right For Life.
Scientists have discovered a planet not too much bigger than Earth that's circling a distant star that's much like our own sun. What's more, this planet is in the "Goldilocks zone" around that star — a region that's not too hot and not too cold. That's the kind of place that could be home to liquid water and maybe even life.

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDedspace and end it with #KQEDDoNow

For more info on how to use Twitter, click here.

More Resources for Follow-up Lessons

QUEST's Planet Hunters on PBS LearningMedia The Inhabitable Zone:
The search for life on distant planets in the universe has spurred scientists to more carefully explore the conditions of our own planet Earth and what characteristics and conditions allow us to live in relative balance within the structure of the solar system.

QUEST segment SETI: The New Search for ET
Is anyone out there? For over 40 years scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, but they've found nothing. Now the new Allen Telescope Array, a string of 350 radio telescopes, is being built 300 miles north of San Francisco and is breathing new life into the search. Find out why SETI scientists now say we might be hearing from ET sooner than you think.

Filed under: 6 -12 Science, Do Now
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