Students comprehend how Landsat satellites orbit teh Earth to produce images. They comprehend the elliptical path of satellites. Students recognize that a different orbital path is needed for different satellites to perform their tasks....

How do satellites communicate? What types of satellites orbit Earth? Discover and mimic the way satellites communicate between two points in a hands-on activity that has pupils using mirrors, flashlights, and marbles.

Blast off! How do satellites, space shuttles, and space stations escape Earth's gravity and achieve orbit? Young astronauts study rocket science (literally) with an interactive lesson. They discover the four main uses for satellites, how...

The moon orbits Earth while the Earth is rotating, and the Earth revolves around the sun. This can be a tricky concept for young astronomers. Implement an activity that helps distinguish between the movements of Earth's systems around...

Learners practice relating rules of trigonometry and properties of circles. With a few simplifying assumptions such as a perfectly round earth, young mathematicians calculate the lengths of various paths between satellite and...

Satellites require rockets to launch, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand them. Future engineers learn about how satellites send data to Earth and how to interpret satellite images. They see how radio waves play a role...

Survey the solar system by viewing this PowerPoint. Amateur astronomers discover that gravity is responsible for Earth's orbit around the sun and the moon's orbit around Earth. They explore the moon's phases and Earth's seasons. This...

How much do you really know about our planet? Middle schoolers build up their prior knowledge about Earth, its placement in the solar system, its composition, and important geological vocabulary with an introductory earth science activity.

An outstanding space science PowerPoint is here for your charges. It provides an effective overview of the Solar System; specifically the Earth and the Moon. The slides contain illustrations of the planets and focus on the Earth's...

Beginning with general information on satellites and seasons, concluding with polar ice and the Cryosat Mission, this worksheet gives your earth scientists an opportunity to conduct some research. Most of the assignment consists of short...

Students examine the three primary colors of light and design a numerical code to represent those colors. They tell how satellites use numbers to create satellite images after completing a number of experimental activities.

This isn't rocket science, you know. A performance task has learners use right triangle trigonometry to calculate distances from stations on Earth to a satellite. It also requires finding the distance between two stations along the...

Brief, but beneficial, this resource draws space scientists into the orbit of a moon around its planet. Assignees answer five multiple choice style questions using a diagram of the planet, the moon's orbit, its focal points, and the...

Did the image I drew match the image you saw? By simulating a satellite and a ground station, teams of two transmit data in the form of pixels in order to recreate an image. They use four different levels of brightness, creating slightly...

Middle schoolers explore satellite orbits and gravitational force.

Preparing for an assessment? Here's an activity that will ensure that all class members have the background knowledge they need to demonstrate their skills on a performance task related to the solar system and the tools astronomers use...

For this satellite technology worksheet, students read about Low Earth Orbit satellites and the frictional drag from the Earth's atmosphere that causes them to fall back towards the Earth. Students use given data of the years the...

Assess your young scientists' understanding of the difference between observation and inference with this 20-question multiple choice quiz. It reviews a variety of physics and astronomy concepts, such as solar eclipses and sunspots, the...

As you work through Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, try out some or all of the 20 questions and activities included here. Useful for discussion questions, group assignments, or individual projects, this resource covers plot as...

Students, viewing an Internet site, plot the path of several satellites using latitude and longitude over the course of an hour. They learn the four basic types of satellites and their purpose.

Learners explore geography by completing a navigation activity in class. In this satellite positioning lesson, students define terms such as orbit, satellite, GPS and triangulation. Learners view diagrams of the Earth's orbit and...

Students use NASA satellite data to correlate cloud cover over Africa to the solar declination.

Intricate details of a modern technology that many of us take for granted in our phones, computers (and some cars) are laid bare in a short but deeply investigative activity. The math behind a seemingly simple GPS device...

Students use NASA drawings to build a model satellite for a specific mission. They design a set of drawings for their satellite showing its subsystems as well.