This site answers questions that include: Why do we want to travel to Mars? How would your body change in space? Where would a space explorer find water and oxygen? How can we travel faster in space? Student actors (on video) and hands-on activities are featured with each answer. The site is for Grades 3-5 and available in Spanish.

Explores the changing roles, ethical conflicts, and public perceptions of science and scientists in American society from World War II to the present. Studies specific historical episodes focusing on debates between scientists and the contextual factors influencing their opinions and decisions. Topics include the atomic bomb project, environmental controversies, the Challenger disaster, biomedical research, genetic engineering, (mis)use of human subjects, scientific misconduct and whistleblowing.

In 2001, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft discovered significant amounts of water ice buried in the high latitude regions of Mars. This exciting discovery, based upon data from the Mars Gamma Ray Spectrometer, helped motivate the development of the Mars Phoenix Lander mission, which will arrive in the Martian arctic in 2008 to investigate this buried water ice. The product includes five classroom activities related to the discovery of water ice. These field-tested activities involve both guided and open inquiry activities using real data to investigate and learn about processes occurring on Mars. Each lesson includes a teacher guide and student guide. In addition, some of the lessons are accompanied by PowerPoint presentations and one extension activity utilizes an educational Flash animation.

CK-12 users should treat this FlexBook as an online textbook for Earth Science courses. This FlexBook underwent a thorough review conducted by practicing teachers, domain experts, copyeditors, and technical editors. It can be used in its current form, "flexed" (customized), and/or printed by the user. CK-12 supports feedback on all of its FlexBooks so that they can be continually improved and updated, while remaining aligned with state standards and curriculum guidelines.

This digital textbook was reviewed for its alignment with California content standards.

In this product, students engage in processes/activities for collaboration and communication strategies. Students compare risks of courses of action confronting NASA's Deep Impact mission team. Students investigate information necessary to support arguments, quantitative risk analyses, debate, role play, persuasive writing/communication skills and group decision making procedures. This activity has been aligned to the national math and science standards as well as math and science standards for California, Texas and Maryland.

Who Are NASA's Earth Explorers? The elementary school student questioning if El Nino occurs anywhere besides the Pacific Ocean... The researcher investigating connections between Arctic ozone depletion and global climate change... The consumer comparing hydrocarbon versus hydrogen-powered cars... And the business person projecting future needs for harvest, delivery, and storage of crops... All of these people are Earth Explorers -- they are all connected by their curiosity about Earth system processes. This monthly series will introduce you to NASA Earth Explorers, young and old, with a variety of backgrounds and interests.

The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) maintains an Earth Explorers topic index for educators, students and others who want to browse articles by subject. IGES is a nonprofit organization that works with NASA's Science Mission Directorate to provide educational Earth and space science content for the NASA portal.

This course is a detailed technical and historical exploration of the Apollo project to "fly humans to the moon and return them safely to earth" as an example of a complex engineering system. Emphasis is on how the systems worked, the technical and social processes that produced them, mission operations, and historical significance. Guest lectures are featured by MIT-affiliated engineers who contributed to and participated in the Apollo missions. Students work in teams on a final project analyzing an aspect of the historical project to articulate and synthesize ideas in engineering systems.

In this video segment from NASA, robotics researcher Ayanna Howard uses engineering to improve the intelligence of robots in space exploration.

By offering teachers five distinct activities that do not depend on one another, "Exploring Mars" is perfect for teachers wanting short, focused activities. The design of this module enables teachers to do one, some, or all of the activities to give their students a powerful introduction to Mars, planets, astronomy, and space exploration. Examine the list below to learn about the individual activities.

This site features more than a dozen moments in history -- Washington's worry that Britain was spreading smallpox among American troops (1775), Jefferson's observations of the French revolution (1789), Truman's first meeting with Stalin (1945), and others.

This interactive field trip features interviews with scientists and technicians who work in the Genesis cleanroom at NASA Johnson Space Center. The field trip includes an interactive diagram of the laboratory with photos of various areas. Video shows scientists donning cleanroom clothing, washing samples, and assembling sampling wafers onto the array frame of the Genesis probe.

Students are asked to identify equipment and/or instruments used to explore the universe.

Mars has many canyons and valleys, most of which were caused by the movement of the planet's crust. By examining these canyons and valleys, students gain insight into the processes that created them. Since the Grand Canyon of Mars is a rift valley and was not formed by water, this module focuses on processes that alter a planet's surface in the absence of flowing surface water such as uplift, slumping, sapping, and subsidence.

In this fast-paced NASA Brain Bites™ video, an astronaut demonstrates the impact of microgravity on the use of tools in space.

This PowerPoint is a comprehensive educational resource for museum educators highlighting the major mission information and science background for the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) Mission, a Small Explorer Earth-orbiting spacecraft that is designed to map the distant boundary between the solar wind from our Sun and the interstellar medium. This PowerPoint will be distributed along with activities to support a full-length planetarium show about the IBEX mission and the boundary of the Solar System. Each short activity/product helps to build awareness and engagement in the science and engineering aspects of the mission that is reinforced as visitors choose to participate in more activities, including viewing the Show and mission web site.

This interactive resource from NASA illustrates how infrared technology has advanced space exploration and can offer insight into questions about star formation, planetary systems, brown dwarfs, and the origins of the universe.

This site invites students to design chambers for growing plants on the moon. (Plants may be used to supplement meals of astronauts during space exploration.) Teacher guides include lessons on providing light and water for the plants, choosing plant species, exploring the moon, and designing, building, and evaluating plant growth chambers.

This interactive lets you explore a bit of Mars in 3D. This is the real thing: a 3D model of the planet's surface created using data from orbiting spacecraft

In this activity, students are challenged to plan a mission to Mars and to design the spacecraft that will carry out their mission. The activity uses the collectible card game format to make it fun as well as educational.