A Great Site for Space Information

Just to follow up the post The New Space Race, I wanted to write a post about my favorite space related web resource. As I mentioned before in Our First Post, perhaps my greatest passion and interest is space. Ever since I was a child I dreamed of working at NASA and participating in the space program. My elementary school was one of only a few (and the only in Indiana) to have a Challenger Center. I often volunteered my time as a student helper at the center and begged my fifth grade teacher to let me go to the center every chance I got (it was just down the hall!) The Challenger Center, coupled with regular topics in school relating to space fueled my passion and inspired me to eventually become a computer engineer.

Today’s curriculum is incredibly lacking in space related topics in my opinion, but that does not mean educators around the country cannot work in some of that magic of space into lessons. Something about it just makes students curious and adventurous! Space.com is an amazing web resource for everything that is currently going on in space related science and I encourage everyone to check it out. It is not necessarily geared toward education or toward children but more often than not they have great stories, simulations and live videos of global launches (of satellites, probes and manned missions).

There were not many things more inspiring to the 5th grade me than watching Space Shuttle launches and seeing astronauts building the International Space Station. Even though I am not currently working on the space program (I did have internships with NASA while at Purdue) it is a field I would love to get back involved with. I will continue to post things on this blog from Space.com and other space related information and Rosanna will chime in with anything that can tie these things to the curriculum. I hope any or all of these resources and ideas will inspire your students in the same way I was inspired.