Programs

LESSON SUMMARY

Mission Scenario

Applicable to all Challenger Learning Center Missions

Application to Mission Preparation

Students will describe a variety of natural and manmade features found around their local Challenger Learning Center as they are seen from space.

This activity can follow the lesson, “How do we track the space station’s location?”

Summary

Using the NASA website The Gateway to Astronaut Photography, students will download a high resolution image of their local Challenger Learning Center and surrounding community.  Students can enhance the image in Photoshop and print it for study. In groups, students will look for manmade and natural features of interest including their Learning Center. Manmade features may include towns, cities, malls, parks, roads, smoke from fires or factories, silt from rivers in coastal regions, etc.  Natural features may include islands, beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, mountains, etc.

After locating features of interest, students can compare their image to other satellite maps and street maps using Google Maps to try to determine their origin (i.e. smoke from an unknown source) or what they are (i.e. a stadium or other large building complex). Students can complete additional research on one area of interest and present their findings to the class using multimedia tools such as video or presentation software.  Students will work in teams (or individually) to create a portfolio of their observations of one area of the planet and post it in a shared online forum.   

The shared online Earth Science forum for students is located at http://www.challengerkids.org. It includes links to the Earth Science Challenge and to students’ portfolios of observations. Students can upload imagery, text and videos, and comment on each other’s journals. Challenger Center educational staff moderates all posts.

In an extension activity, students can research a series of images taken by Richard Garriott from the International Space Station for the Nature Conservancy.  Richard Garriott, private space explorer, partnered with The Nature Conservancy to identify environmental change and successful protection projects around the world. He photographed sites selected by Nature Conservancy scientists during his flight last year to the International Space Station. The photographs will be used by scientists to compare the ecological changes within one generation. Students can explore and download the images and complete research on why these sites are important to conservationists using the information and links provided for each site.

• Lesson Overview

  • Lesson Summary

  • Objectives and Essential Questions

  • What do the astronauts see from the International Space Station?

  • Teaching the Lesson

  The Earth From Space

  • Life on Earth: The Biosphere

  • Water and Air: The Hydrosphere and the Atmosphere

  • The Land: The Geosphere

  • Human Impact and The Ecosphere