A heater’s failure spoiled Endeavour’s countdown on Friday, April 29th. Troubleshooting over this weekend may help pinpoint the problem so that the shuttle will be able to launch into space as early as Monday, May 2nd for Endeavour’s final liftoff. Endeavour’s mission to the International Space Station, known as STS-134, represents the shuttle’s last scheduled flight before retirement and the second-last flight of the 30-year space shuttle program. NASA plans to conduct the STS-135 mission with a potential launch date of June 28.
As you may be aware, to honor the history of the space shuttle missions and their significant contributions to space science, I have been sharing a series of video clips and lesson plans. I have been holding off sharing the final Lesson Plan in this series to wait for the launch of Endeavour, because in my participation at Space Camp (mentioned in previous blog entries) I was the Commander of a simulated flight of Endeavour.
This video lesson will explore some math-related lessons around the size of and distances between objects in space. The space comparison video ends with a series of images taken from Hubble and a visualization activity that engages students in trying to conceptualize the numbers of stars in the universe.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts and viewing the lesson materials as much as I have enjoyed putting them together.