Saturday STEM Challenge: Landing on Another Planet
Using a few office supplies and recyclables, we can simulate the physics required to land on the Moon. So here’s this week’s STEM challenge: using three index cards, two pieces of cardboard (each about 4 inches by 5 inches), some tape, and a small cup (you can make this yourself, if necessary), create a landing module that will safely land an astronaut (here, represented by a marshmallow, ping pong ball, or other small, light object) on another planet.
At-home STEM Activities: Viewing Earth from Above
This week we’re learning all about life in space, and today we’re talking about one of NASA’s projects aboard the International Space Station: the High Definition Earth Viewing system. Learn about the goals of this experiment, watch it’s live stream, and then try your hand at identifying locations on Earth by how the seen from an astronaut’s point of view!
Distance Learning Module: Recycling Water in Space
This week’s Distance Learning theme is “life in space.”
All living organisms—from the tiniest bacteria to the biggest jungle predators, and all the plants on Earth—require water to survive. Of course, people need water, too—even when they are traveling or working in space. Water is dense—so even a little bit of it is heavy. This makes it very expensive to send water from Earth to space—more than $83,000 per gallon to be exact!
For this reason, astronauts—like the ones on the International Space Station (ISS)—need to find ways of reusing the water that they already have. The process of recycling wastewater is also known as water reclamation. Water reclamation is vital to space travel as we know it, and would be a “must” if we ever got to the point of sending people to live for long periods of time on extraterrestrial (outside of Earth) colony.