A rocket must carry the fuel it expels in order to accelerate its structure and payload. The rocket equation relates the change in speed to the fuel mass expelled. To launch a spacecraft into Earth orbit requires a multi-stage rocket, since otherwise the mass of fuel required would be prohibitive. While the details vary among historical and…

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration--European Space Agency collaborative mission to test the feasibility of defending Earth from a catastrophic asteroid impact by using a spacecraft to deflect the asteroid away from the planet. Launched on Nov. 23, 2021, the DART spacecraft will intercept…

This article describes the NASA-Funded Space Grant Project BOREALIS: "Balloon Outreach, Research, Exploration, and Landscape Imaging System." BOREALIS conducts high-altitude balloon flights to the "edge of space" with flights typically reaching 100,000 feet and a current record flight in the summer of 2020 that reached 126,000…

Space science education is an area of emerging importance in the 21st Century. Missions sponsored by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and programs facilitated through the NASA Space Science Education Consortium (NSSEC) offer unique opportunities to foster learner interest in space science as well as the broader field…

Despite the advanced technology and engineering that has gone onto the International Space Station and other space programmes, the measurement of the force experienced in the spacecraft is tested using a method that is well over 350 years old. The time of oscillation of a simple pendulum, as often investigated in school physics, provides the basis…

While the satellite industry is characterized by dynamic innovation, it has steadily matured into a healthy, market-driven model of customers, value generators, and supporting suppliers. Even while the satellite market remains strong, satellite employers are caught squarely in the aerospace talent management paradigm. When a product line is…

Moonshot is the redesign of NASA's High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS), which traditionally engaged Texas high school juniors in a 16-week online course for credit and an intense week-long onsite experience working in teams with experts at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). Due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), our challenge was to design,…

Sense-making has been described as working on and with ideas--both students' ideas and authoritative ideas in texts--to build coherent storylines, models, and/or explanations. This article describes the process for developing storyline units to support students' making sense of and explaining a rocket launch. The storyline approach, which aligns…

Several federal grants prioritized the role of community colleges in education and training in recent years, and one of the most substantial investments was the Trade Adjustment Act Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program of the United States Department of Labor (DOL). Beginning October 2011, these $2 billion capacity-building…