Sally Ride EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) is a NASA educational outreach program that enables students, teachers, and the public to learn about Earth from the unique perspective of space.

During Sally Ride EarthKAM missions (periods when the Sally Ride EarthKAM camera is operational), middle school students around the world request images of specific locations on Earth.

The purpose of this lesson is to see how astronomers use crater counts (more precisely, crater densities) to estimate the age of an object’s surface and how, from that, we can infer that impacts were very important in the early history of the Solar System

The lesson explores the idea of a SuperMoon and is designed to demonstrate that the Moon’s orbit around the Sun is not circular but elliptical.  

Instructions and Image files for the Super Moon activity are included below as word and pdf files.

Purpose of The Coal and Energy Unit

Coal is a part of our daily lives, but how often do we think about its importance? Coal generates over half our electricity and provides Pennsylvanians with thousands of jobs at mines, power plants, and in the transportation industry.

We hope that the students will gain an understanding of:

An image is a powerful tool for Earth and space science instruction.  An image can capture a feature, a process, and/or an event and allow us to bring that snapshot to our students.  Although images may be used throughout a class period, an image can be used at the very beginning of a class to engage students and direct classroom discussion for the day.

We invite you to contribute to our collection of examples of how you utilize an “image of the day.”