Mission X : Train Like An Astronaut

NASA Challenges Students To Train Like An Astronaut

WASHINGTON -- NASA and 14 international space agencies are challenging students to complete a nutrition and fitness program known as "Mission X: Train Like an Astronaut." Approximately 3,700 students from more than 25 different cities worldwide are participating in this six-week pilot project.

NASA's Human Research Program is sponsoring the U.S. component of the international challenge that began Tuesday. Teams of students between eight and 12 years old will learn principles of healthy eating, exercise and compete for points by finishing training modules. Students also will practice scientific reasoning and teamwork while participating in hands-on training that targets strength, endurance, coordination, balance and spatial awareness. The exercises will involve the same types of skills astronauts learn during training for spaceflights.

"A part of the human space exploration mission is to inspire our youth to stay in school and master professions in the sciences and engineering fields to carry on this important work well into the 21st century," said Charles Lloyd, NASA's Human Research Program Education and Outreach Project manager. "We believe this starts with our youth in elementary school. We hope this international fitness challenge will assist them with that lifelong endeavor."

Mission X challenges students to be more physically active; increases awareness of the importance of lifelong health and conditioning; teaches students how fitness plays a vital role in human performance for exploration; and inspires and motivates students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The U.S., Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Spain and United Kingdom are hosting teams for the challenge. Team USA is hosted by the College Station Independent School District (ISD) in College Station, Texas. It consists of more than 800 fourth-grade students. After six weeks of training, the U.S. challenge will culminate in a March 24th event, called the Fit Explorer Hometown Hullabaloo, to celebrate the students' success.

"Mission X is an exciting way to actively involve students in learning the importance of nutrition and physical fitness," said Becky Burghardt, director for curriculum, College Station ISD. "Children are fascinated by the training experiences of astronauts and are motivated to mirror what real-life astronauts do to prepare for space missions. Teachers and administrators are hopeful the rich science and physical education experiences designed by NASA will help students become aware of the importance of living a healthy lifestyle."

Upon completion of this pilot, the goal is to expand the program to more schools in additional countries.

To see NASA astronaut Cady Coleman kick off the challenge from the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=46235751

The 18 core activities of the challenge are available for download in seven languages.

To view country updates and Mission X teams' progress, visit:

http://trainlikeanastronaut.org/en

For more information about other NASA education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education MM

source : NASA

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

Hello Readers!

It's almost the end for the year 2010, and in a few more days, the Earth will complete it's orbit, circling the Sun. After many years past, human tries hard on exploring the universe, unrevealed and tried to solve many mysterious that beyond human's imagination. Space Explorations have been growing rapidly fast in these past few years. Many countries such America, Russia and Canada had discovered and explore our universe beyond the solar system. And many other countries such as India and China also had started to involve in these Space Explorations field.

By sending and making many types of space probes, rockets and even astronomical telescopes, Space Exploration had changed most of human's lifestyle. People may not know, that things and gadgets we used today, are from the Space Exploration Programme. Laptops, Internet, Communications Devices are all from the research from the programme. Even simplest things; such as fire fighters' suits, is actually the same material as the astronaut used as spacesuit.

In order to increase the human lifestyle for a better way of living, Space Exploration had cost so much money and even lives. Every missions sometimes give a success and failure results; and it's really needs a lot of patients and a strong heart to make the mission success! In this year, 2010; China's and India's rockets had exploded while take off to send their satellites to the moon. America also had lost their Space Shuttle Columbia and Challenger in their mission on ISS (International Space Station). As human, we make mistakes, and from mistakes we learnt for a better idea.

In the future, Space Explorations field will grow more rapidly as the technology gets more advance; and could help human go further beyond our planet in resolving mysteries in our universe. In 2020, NASA had planned to go back to moon. The preparation had almost complete, as NASA had already started to test their new Ares IV engine's rocket, the new lunar rover, the new spacesuit; that help the astronaut to be able to suits the environment in space and other preparations. This shown how much serious they are in this mission.

Now you could know that how Space Explorations, help and impact our daily life and helping human towards a better way of living. There are lots to discover and learn about our universe and I am really hope to have your feedback or any comments and ideas that could help my blog towards a better understanding. It's almost 3 years for me, creating this blog; Star-Lunac, and I do really enjoy blogging and share with you informations and ideas about Astronomy and Space Explorations. And now, Star-Lunac has a new author that help me, updating this blog and share with all about the outer space and the universe. Thus, feel free to comment or contact us if you had any ideas or questions to know so that we could improve our blog's management.

I think that's all for now, and I wish you all a very Happy New Year and Happy Holidays! ^,^

- If you want to know more about NASA's review missions in 2010, click here.

*I'm sorry I couldn't share with you any new year's banner for this year; either from me or NASA, as I couldn't have much time to do one.

Comets

A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma (a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere) and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei are themselves loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles, ranging from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across. Comets have been observed since ancient times and have historically been considered bad omens.

Comets have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from a few years to hundreds of thousands of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper Belt, or its associated scattered disc, which lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. Longer-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort Cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies in the outer Solar System. Long-period comets plunge towards the Sun from the Oort Cloud because of gravitational perturbations caused by either the massive outer planets of the Solar System (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), or passing stars. Rarehyperbolic comets pass once through the inner Solar System before being thrown out intointerstellar space along hyperbolic trajectories.

Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of a coma or a tail. However, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System.These have somewhat blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets (see centaurs and asteroid terminology).

As of May 2010 there are a reported 3,976 known comets of which about 1,500 are Kreutz Sungrazers and about 484 are short-period.This number is steadily increasing. However, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population: the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer solar system may number one trillion. The number visible to the naked eye averages roughly one per year, though many of these are faint and unspectacular.Particularly bright or notable examples are called "Great Comets".

Source : wikipedia