Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures. This brochure provides a comprehensive overview of the Aqua spacecraft, instruments, science, and data products.

In this interactive activity produced for Teachers' Domain, learn how Arctic sea ice has changed over the past 25 years in terms of maximum winter extent, concentration, and the timing of breakup each spring.

Students explore the evidence for dark matter using the measurements made by the ROSAT X-ray satellite for a small group of galaxies. Grades 9-12.

This video segment adapted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shows how integral satellites are to everyday life and describes the different types, including orbital and geostationary.

This site presents challenges faced by NASA engineers who are developing the next generation of aerospace vehicles. The challenges: thermal protection systems, spacecraft structures, electrodynamic propulsion systems, propellers, and personal satellite assistants. Students design, build, test, re-design, and re-build models that meet specified design criteria, using the same analytical skills as engineers.

This BioBulletin Web site takes an in-depth look at how satellites have altered our perception of the planet. The site includes text, videos, photographs, and interviews with key scientists.

This is a self-contained book-on-the-web course on basic astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, the sun (and associated physics), and spaceflight and spacecraft. covers elementary astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, the Sun and related physics and spaceflight. Also included are a Spanish translation, 46 lesson plans, a short but complete math course (algebra + trig), teachers' guides, glossary, timelines, 345 questions (current tally) by users and their answers, over 100 problems to solve, and more.

This site allows users to browse through a library of JPEG images of the various space missions. The images are grouped under several categories: Human Exploration, the Apollo Program, Robotic Exploration, and General images (launches, landings, satellites).

This database contains imagery from geosationary satellites. Visitors can access daily images or archived imagery form GOES-9, METEOSAT, and other satellites. The imagery features hemispheric and whole-disk views of Earth, water vapor maps, and images of storms and other special events. Links to satellite homepages and to other related topics are included.

Move the sun, earth, moon and space station to see how it affects their gravitational forces and orbital paths. Visualize the sizes and distances between different heavenly bodies, and turn off gravity to see what would happen without it!

The marine environment is unique and requires technologies that can use sound to gather information since there is little light underwater. The sea-floor is characterized using underwater sound and acoustical systems. Current technological innovations are allowing scientists to further understand and apply information about animal locations and habitat. Remote sensing and exploration with underwater vehicles allows scientists to map and understand the sea floor, and in some cases, the water column. In this lesson, the students will be shown benthic habitat images produced by GIS. These imaged will lead to a class discussion on why habitat mapping is useful and how current technology works to make bathymetry mapping possible. The teacher will then ask inquiry-based questions to have students brainstorm about the importance of bathymetry mapping.

Students learn more about forces by examining the force of gravitational attraction. They observe how objects fall and measure the force of gravitational attraction upon objects.

Students will view pictures and illustrations of the three satellites and the light they detect. Students will learn about visible light, infrared light, and UV light through teacher demonstration.

This activity helps students learn how to find, interpret, and describe weather data. Students learn also about drought, flooding, wind and dust storms, hurricanes, and lightning, as well as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite -- the information it provides and why that information is important.

This classroom activity explains how clouds and pollution in the atmosphere are important to climate, and the need to study whether pollution may be changing Earth's climate in undesirable ways. It introduces NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) mission. The activity includes building a MISR-lite model to demonstrate how looking at the same thing (i.e., Earth's atmosphere) from different angles produces a 3-dimensional effect that gives much more information than just viewing it from one angle, and helps scientists establish a baseline of information about current conditions in the atmosphere. The activity was originally published in Technology Teacher, a magazine published by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA).

In this activity, students will learn about the magnetosphere, the effects of solar activity, and the importance of the Earth's magnetic field in protecting living organisms from solar radiation. Background information, a materials list, procedures, outcomes, and standards are included. Links to a glossary and to additional information are embedded in the text.

This classroom activity explains and demonstrates how the Global Positioning System satellites work to provide precise location information to positions on the ground, as well as to other satellites whose job is to map the surface of Earth. The activity is specifically tied to NASA's Jason-1 and Topex/Poseidon spacecraft in their mission to map ocean topography. In addition to the concepts of distance vs. time and triangulation, the article also introduces Doppler effect. The activity was originally published in Technology Teacher, a magazine published by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA).

This animation by Thomas Goertel of the Space Telescope Science Institute is an artist's conception of a spiral galaxy harboring a super-massive black hole. Observe how the material rotates faster the closer it is to the nucleus.

Build your own system of heavenly bodies and watch the gravitational ballet. With this orbit simulator, you can set initial positions, velocities, and masses of 2, 3, or 4 bodies, and then see them orbit each other.