Educational Web site on spacecraft, space exploration

Abstract

Although many high school students are keenly interested in space, so far no way has existed for incorporating spaceflight and space exploration studies into regular high school courses in physics and astronomy. “From Stargazers to Starships,” available through the World Wide Web, attempts to do just that. Compiled by a NASA physicist, it is essentially a textbook on the Web, containing over 60 linked files, all connected to its home page at http://www‐spof.gsfc.nasa. gov/stargaze/Sintro.htm.The new site should be just as useful to anyone else interest in space. Resembling an earlier site, “The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere,” and also linked to it, “Stargazers” consists of three parts of comparable size. They cover the night sky and what it tells, Newtonian mechanics, and space flight and spacecraft. Numerous images illustrate the text files, which also have a guide for teachers, a “timeline” chronology, a glossary, a “math refresher” in nine sections, and a hands‐on project for constructing a paper sundial.