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NASA Spacelink Gets a New Look
Have you checked out NASA Spacelink's new look? Spacelink, designed for teachers and students, is better than ever. It's faster, more efficient, and boasts a powerful new search engine.
It's been around since 1988. But now Spacelink, NASA's "space resource for educators," is bigger and better! The goal of the "new" Spacelink is to link teachers and students to NASA information and educational resources---quickly. Spacelink now offers a powerful new search engine, and the new "Library" feature offers more than 13,000 files arranged by subject.
Once the bastion of all information NASA, the new Spacelink site has broken down those barriers and invited in some cool stuff from outside NASA's walls. For example, in the Hubble Space Telescope directory listing you will find links to the Space Telescope Science Institute and other related sites.
So have you been to Spacelink lately? C'mon, come with me as I tour the new NASA Spacelink. Ready?…10….9….8….
Blast off!
First stop on our mission---the new NASA Spacelink home page (or index page). Home pages don't look much cleaner or simpler than this one does. Three categories, plus the search engine. That's it! No confusion. No hunting around for the right door to open. Three choices:
- Hot Topics
- Cool Picks
- The Library
BLAST-OFF INTO HOT TOPICS!
Next stop: Hot Topics. (Here the choices widen.) Choose from a variety of high-interest topics. Hot Topics features might change from time to time. On our tour we find a feature highlighting the next shuttle mission, its astronauts, and its goals. Also, if you're looking for the latest information from NASA, check out the NASA News feature. Here you'll find NASA press releases from this month, this year, and years ago. Releases from the current month are highlighted. Read the headlines and click on any that are of interest. In July, we found 35 releases; a bunch of the releases sounded interesting, including
- Hubble Looks at Cloudy Mars (July 1)
- No Holiday for Shuttle Team (July 5)
- Pathfinder Hit Hard on Internet (July 10)
- Mars Rover Contest Winner (July 17)
- NASA Helps Assess Bone Problems (July 21)
- MIR Staffing Revised Plan (July 30)
Want to look back farther? Just click on "Previous News Releases" at the bottom of the list. Or check out some of the other features on the NASA News page, including the "NASA-TV Schedule." For a brief overview of NASA history since 1991, click on "The Years in Review" and then on the specific year that you want to read about.
The Mars Pathfinder feature will connect you to the very latest news about the current mission. Click on any one of the URLs on this page and you'll be transported to the "Welcome to Mars" page.
Especially cool (or is that hot?) is the Shuttle Team Online feature. Here the men and women who make the space shuttle flights happen tell about their jobs. Read brief bios of everyone involved---and then peak into the pages of their journals for a little more insight into what they do. Here you can meet and get to know the shuttle nutritionist, the crew that trains the astronauts, the people who maintain and repair the shuttle, the team that monitors the shuttle during the countdown, in-flight controllers, the crew that monitors the payload (the science experiments) on board each mission, and the people who are responsible for landing the shuttle safely. Also included in the Shuttle Team Online feature is a Teacher's Lounge with a few learning resources and a discussion group for teachers.
REFRESHING COOL PICKS!
Take a break from Hot Topics and dip into Spacelink's second category, Cool Picks. Among the features you'll find here is the Space Calendar, a thorough listing of space-related dates of note. Listed by month, you'll find more dates here than you, your students, or the head of NASA would ever need to know!
Check out the PDS Mars Explorer for the Armchair Astronaut to view an image of Mars. Click on one of the call-outs for an image of the Mars surface (including the Viking 1 landing site, Viking 2 landing site, and the Pathfinder landing site), and then use the handy "pan and zoom" buttons under the image to focus on a particular segment or to enlarge (or shrink) it. "Cool," indeed!
The NIX (NASA Image eXchange) is a search engine with access to thousands of space images. Most of those images are old ones. (Newer images are accessible at other parts of the site.) I did a search for images of "Pluto." I got two. One was a 1990 Hubble Space Telescope image of distant Pluto. The other was a 1975 image of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project team at Disney World with Mickey Mouse---and "Pluto!" What can I say? The search engine works!
The Hubble Space Telescope Pictures feature provides more recent images, including shots of Mars and Hale-Bopp.
Another Cool Picks feature worth checking out is The Golden Record. Voyager carried into space a disk---a sort of time capsule---that included on it items from four categories:
Images---See images of the planets, a supermarket, and children holding a globe.
Sounds---The disk includes the sounds of a whale, rain, a jet, and a baby.
Language---Listen to greetings to the universe from Earth in 55 languages!
Music---See the list, which includes a Navajo chant and a selection from Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."
You can search through a library of 250,000 images from NASA in the Earth from Space feature. Just click on the category you'd most like to view: cities, landscapes, hurricanes and weather, or geographic regions to name a few.
The At Home with NASA's Technology feature highlights in pictures and words just how much the space program has changed our lives. At home, NASA technology has brought us TV images from around the globe, cordless tools and appliances, smoke detectors, and water purifiers. See in this feature how NASA technology has changed life at the shopping mall, the hospital, the airport, and on the farm.
VISIT THE LIBRARY BEFORE YOU LEAVE!
One last stop before heading back to home (page). The Library offers one-stop shopping for all the information you might want or need about NASA and its programs. This part of the trip can be more confusing, or overwhelming, than the other stops were. Every time you click, it seems you have another laundry list of options. Some are more interesting than others are. (Using the search engine would be a good choice if you're not sure where to find what you want to know.)
But The Library includes at least two sections that are worth looking into. Check out the Instructional Materials feature. Here you'll find---depending on your curriculum area of expertise---a wide range of activities for classroom instruction. Some are surprising (pleasantly so), others are disappointing. In the Curriculum Materials section, I was especially impressed with some of the activities offered up in the Art area! In the Geography area, check out some more Earth images from space. The "Living in Space" lesson plans in the Interdisciplinary Materials section were interesting too.
And the Frequently Asked Questions feature is worth your time (and your students' time). The FAQ feature covers topics such as astronauts and the space shuttle. There's even a "NASA's Most Frequently Asked Questions" section!
YOU COULD SPEND DAYS IN "SPACELINK"….
…because the site has that much to offer! I hope this little training mission has given you an idea of what you'll find at the new NASA Spacelink. While you're looking around, why not take a bit more time before splashdown to explore Spacelink's universe of information?
Article by Gary Hopkins
Education World® Editor-in-Chief
Copyright © 1997 Education World
08/08/1997
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