This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science problems distributed to thousands of teachers during the 2010-2011 school year. The problems were intended for students looking for additional challenges in the mathematics and physical science curriculum. The problems deal with modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data.

This book introduces many topics in the emerging subject of astrobiology: The search for life beyond Earth. It covers concepts in evolution, the detection of extra-solar planets, habitability, Drake's Equation, and the properties of planets such as temperature and distance from their star.

This book covers many topics in remote sensing, satellite imaging, image analysis and interpretation. Examples are culled from earth science and astronomy missions. Students learn about instrument resolution and sensitivity as well as how to calibrate a common digital camera, and how to design a satellite imaging system.

This book follows the topic order of a standard high school Algebra 2 textbook (McDougal-Littell 2005), but provides supplementary problems related to space science and astronomy. Topics include scientific notation, polynomial equations, matrices, trigonometric functions, exponential and power functions, probability, statistics, and complex numbers.

Although planets, stars and other celestial bodies move through space in complicated ways, space is so vast that rarely do such bodies collide. However, when someone watches these movements from a distant vantage point, it sometimes looks as though collisions occur because of the perspective. The introduction of Transit Math clearly explains the apparent "collisions," eclipses, transits and occultations to middle school students. The variety of concepts in this 44-problem collection includes synodic periods, planetary conjunctions, geometry, fractions, linear equations and probability. The problems are authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. Each word problem includes background information. The one-page assignments are accompanied by one-page teachers answer keys.

Students explore the way in which the sun interacts with Earth to produce space weather and the ways in which astronomers study solar storms to predict when adverse conditions may pose a hazard for satellites and human operation in space. Space Weather Math supplements the Space Weather Action Center site as students track a solar storm from the sun until it impacts our Earth's magnetosphere. The variety of concepts in this 96-problem collection includes concepts such as sunspot cycles, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, graph analysis, unit conversions, linear equations and probability. Each word problem includes background information. The one-page assignments are accompanied by one-page teachers answer keys.

Electromagnetic Math is designed to supplement teaching about electromagnetism. Students explore the simple mathematics behind light and other forms of electromagnetic energy including the properties of waves, wavelength, frequency, the Doppler shift, and the various ways that astronomers image the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum to learn more about the properties of matter and its movement. This collection of 84 problems provides a variety of practical application in mathematics and science concepts including proportions, analyzing graphs, evaluating functions, the inverse-square law, parts of a wave, types of radiation, and energy. Each one-page assignment includes background information. One-page answer keys accompany the assignments.

Students work with a scaled drawing of 26 large moons in the solar system, and together with an exercise in using simple fractions, explore the relative sizes of the moons compared to Earth.

Rockets use fuel tanks that can be approximated as cylinders. In this simple geometric exercise, students work the formula for the volume of a cylinder to add a fuel gauge at the right level to indicate how much fuel remains.

Students explore how the geometry of a gravity lens can be used to measure the mass of the object producing the gravity.

Students explore proportions and angular size using images of Saturn's moons Titan and Dione

Students work with percentages to explore the identities of the 1873 gamma-ray sources detected by NASAs Fermi Observatory

Students explore volume density and mass using the Space Shuttle thermal tiles. Get your own free tile from NASA too!

The recently-confirmed Earth-like planet Kepler-22b by the Kepler Observatory is a massive planet orbiting its star in the temperature zone suitable for liquid water. This problem explores the gravity and mass of this planet, and some implications for playing baseball on its surface!

Students use the properties of ellipses to determine the formula for the Hohmann Transfer Orbit taking the Mars Science Laboratory to Mars in 2012.

Students use a sequence of launch images to determine the Atlas V's launch speed and acceleration. By determining the scale of each image, they estimate average speeds during the first 4 seconds after lift-off.

An example of old news seen in a different way! Students use a spectacular time-lapse photo of the launch of the STEREO mission obtained by photographer Dominic Agostini in 2006 to study parabolic curves.

Students work with the equation of a circle and line to find the orbit intersection points, midpoint, and closest distance to earth.

Students work with the properties of circles and angular measure to see where the moon will be at the start of the asteroid encounter.

Students work with a scaled drawing of the orbit of the moon and the asteroid trajectory to predict where the asteroid will be relative to earth and the orbit of the moon.

Students measure the diameter of the nebula and use speed information to estimate the age of the nebula

Students explore the changing density of dark matter within a distant cluster of galaxies to see if the density of dark matter is uniform inside the cluster.

Students create a simple model of the arrival of water to Earth using three sizes of cometary bodies and their arrival rates.

Students graph the change in Arctic ice surface area, and perform linear and quadratic regressions to model and forecast trends.

Students use ozone data for the Arctic region between 1979 and 2011 to graph the tabulated data, perform simple regression analysis, and forecast trends into the future. How much will there be in the year 2030?

Students estimate the area of the Arctic ozone hole, and work with the concept of parts-per-million to estimate total ozone volume lost.

Students examine two Apollo landing areas using images from the LRO spacecraft to estimate the relative ages of the two regions using crater counting.

Students determine how often the two stars Kepler 16 A and B will line up with Tatooine on the same day of the year.

Students explore the orbit speeds of Tatooine and Kepler-16B and predict how often the two stars line up with the planet to create an 'eclipse'.

Students graph the altitude of the UARS satellite in the weeks before re-enrty to explore the accelerating effects of atmospheric drag. They create a mathematical model that fits the data, and use this to make their own prediction of the re-entry date.

Using the tangent function, students estimate the angular diameter and separation of the two stars in the Kepler 16 binary system as viewed from the planet's surface...if it had one!!

Students use a recent image obtained by the LRO spacecraft to estimate how far astronauts walked to get to various points in the landing area. They also estimate how many craters are in this area and the average impact time between crater events.

The planet CoRot2b is losing mass at a rate of 5 million tons per second. Students estimate how long it will take for the planet to lose its atmosphere

Students use tabular data and graphing to determine the launch speed and acceleration of the Space Shuttle from the launch pad.

Students tabular data to determine the launch speed of the Saturn V rocket from the launch pad.

Students use a sequence of images to determine the launch speed of the satellite from the Space Shuttle cargo bay.

Students use a sequence of images to determine the speed of ascent of the Apollo-17 capsule from the lunar surface.

Students use an image of the asteroid to determine the diameters of craters and mountains using a millimeter ruler and the scale of the image in meters per millimeter.

Students use a sequence of images from a video of the launch to determine speed from the time interval between the images, and the scale of each image.

Students use a sequence of images from a video of the launch to determine speed from the time interval between the images, and the scale of each image.

Students use a sequence of images from a video of the launch to determine speed from the time interval between the images, and the scale of each image.

Students use a sequence of images from a video of the launch to determine speed from the time interval between the images, and the scale of each image.

The latitude, longitude, elapsed time and distance traveled are provided in a table. Students use the data to determine the daily and hourly speed of a leatherback turtle as it travels from New Zealand to California across the Pacific Ocean.

Students explore how the color of a light bulb changes as it gets close to a black hole, demonstrating the principle of the gravitational 'red shift'.

Students explore the temperature of matter falling into a black hole using a simple equation to calculate the gas temperature at different distances.

Students explore how the speed of an orbiting satellite changes if it were near a black hole with five times the mass of our Earth. 

Students compare the sizes of the planets in our solar system if they were actually black holes. They use a compass and metric ruler to create circles that are the actual sizes of the 'black hole' planets.

Students draw a life-sized model of the Earth and Moon as two black holes to explore the actual sizes of these exotic astronomical bodies. 

Students use a simple counting problem to explore how much faster a supercomputer is compared to as hand-calculation. 

Students work with a formula for the Lense-Thirring Effect and estimate how large it will be in orbit around our sun, and in the intense gravitational field of a dense neutron star. 

Students learn about the Lense-Thirring Effect, and calculate its magnitude near Earth's orbit using an algebraic equation with integer and fractional exponents.

Students discuss the popular misconception that the Space Shuttle can travel to the moon by examining the required orbit speed change and the capacity of the Shuttle engines to provide the necessary speed changes.

Students use a series of time-lapse images calculated using a supercomputer to determine the speed of collision of two neutron stars, and whether they will form a black hole afterwards. 

Students use a simple formula to estimate the size of a black hole located 3.8 billion light years from Earth, recently studied by NASA's Chandra and Swift satellites.

Students use the properties of circular arcs to explore sound waves inside stars. 

Students explore the mass and volume of mercury compared to the moon by using the formula for a sphere and scale changes.

Students explore the dosimetry from the Japan 2011 Earthquake and graph the decline of the radiation dose rates with distance from the nuclear reactors. 

Students compare the dose rates measured from the same location in Japan on two different days, then determine the half-life of the radioisotope causing the radiation exposure by comparing the derived half-life with those of Cesium-137 and Iodine-131.

Students use radiation measurements across Japan to calculate the total absorbed doses from the 2011 nuclear reactor failures. They also calculate the total dose for passenger trips on jets and the Concorde. 

Students see how the kind of lifestyle you lead determines most of your annual absorbed radiation dose. Some factors are under your control, and some are not.

Students use a pie grap to calculate the total dose and dose rate for various factors that determine your annual radiation exposure while living on Earth. 

Using a simple physical model, students explore the principle by which the Japan Earthquake of 2011 caused Earth's rotation to spin up by 1.8 microseconds.

Students use the tsunami arrival times and earthquake start time for the devastating 2011 Japan Earthquake to estimate the speed of a tsunami as it crosses the Pacific Ocean to make landfall in Hawaii and California.

Students explore scaling by creating an enlarged geometric model of the ISIM to better appreciate the small changes due to expansion and contraction 

Students use a dramatic Earth Observatory-1 satellite image of agriculture in Namibia to estimate the total cultivated area and water needs of grape growing under desert conditions 

Students use recent measurements of the reflected light from solar system bodies to graph their colors and to use this in classifying new planets as Earth-like, moon-like or Jupiter-liike 

Students learn about magnetic storms using real data in the form of a line graph. They answer simple questions about data range, maximum, and minimum.

Students calculate the surface area of an octagonal cylinder and calculate the power it would yield from solar cells covering its surface.

Students learn about the Kp index using a bar graph. They use the graph to answer simple questions about maxima and time. 

Students read an account of an aurora seen by an observer, and create a drawing or painting based on the description. 

Students calculate the speed of a CME, and describe their aurora observations through writing and drawing.

Students use a Sunspotter to track sunspots during the week of November 7, 2004, and calculate the rotation period of the sun.

Some articles about the Northern Lights imply that solar flares cause them. Students will use data to construct a simple Venn Diagram, and answer an important question about whether solar flares cause CME's and Aurora. 

Students use the formula for a sphere, and the concept of density, to make a mathematical model of a planet based on its mass, radius and the density of several possible materials (ice, silicate rock, iron, basalt).

Students use data to estimate the power of an aurora, and compare it to common things such as the electrical consumption of a house, a city and a country.

Students examine two eye-witness descriptions of an aurora and identify the common elements so that they can extract a common pattern of changes. 

Students use the properties of a triangle to determine how high up aurora are. They also learn about the parallax method for finding distances to remote objects.

Students use the formula for a disk to calculate the mass of the ring current surrounding Earth.

Students use a simple 'square-root' relationship to learn how scientists with the IMAGE satellite measure the density of clouds of plasma in space.

Students learn about kinetic energy and how this concept applies to charged particles. They calculate the speed of a particle for various particle energies.