Are you old enough to remember hearing those words spoken by President John F. Kennedy? I’m not, but I have a distinct memory of the night of July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon—the first humans to set foot on a celestial body other than planet Earth.

I was seven years old. It was a summer night in Ohio and our house was not air conditioned. I had likely spent the day at swim team practice, followed by swim lessons, followed by five more hours of swimming at the pool until dinner time. Come 10 p.m., typically, I’d have been fast asleep in my own bed. On this night, however, I remember falling asleep on the family room floor in front of our black-and-white TV, and my mother shaking me awake, ordering, “Wake up! You have to see this! This is incredible, men on the moon! Who could have imagined it?!”  This from a woman who never graduated from college or showed particular interest in things scientific.

This goes to show the impact the event had not only in the scientific community but also in society and the world at large. After all, the initial goal was to win the race to the moon, over the Soviets, and demonstrate U.S. muscle, more than to achieve specific scientific goals. July 20, 2009, marked the 40th anniversary of this historic event. This milestone reminds us of several topics for research and discussion, including the history of the space exploration program with all its triumphs and tragedies; the social debate regarding the wisdom of the NASA budget; the happy, unintended consequences of the space program, such as microwave ovens; and the relatively novel concept of space tourism. It also reminds us of the need for risk-taking and exploration of the unknown even if we cannot specifically articulate the probable outcomes. In science, it’s called basic research. Finding funding for basic research is challenging since it comes with no guarantee of results.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

Research into and discussion of the NASA space program aligns well with several content standards of the National Science Education Standards: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives; Science and Technology; Physical Science; and Earth and Space Science. Assuming you are still on your summer break, I’ll focus on some resources that can improve background knowledge and others to bookmark for use when school starts.

The obvious place to start is NASA, http://www.nasa.gov/. From the home page, click on Missions and then Apollo 11 to be taken to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/ for the complete history of the Apollo program, with links to 40th anniversary events, lots of visuals, and JFK’s space-related speeches, among others.

From the JFK presidential library, the web site wechoosethemoon.org is an interactive, real-time simulation of the entire Apollo 11 mission. See the July 13, 2009, Huffington blog post for a description of the new site.

Sobel Media, http://www.sobelmedia.com/tag/apollo-11/, also posted at least four short articles about the anniversary as part of a series about Apollo 11.

A YouTube search using “Apollo 11″ produced pages of videos (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Apollo+11&search_type=&aq=f).

Benefits of Space Exploration is a page from the Ask Kids web site. The sidebar menu includes sections titled:

• Why Do We Need Space Exploration
• Why Is Space Exploration Important
• Cons and Pros of Space Exploration
• Reason for Continued Space Exploration
• Risk of Space Exploration

The page itself contains numerous links such as NASA Spinoffs: Bringing Space Down to Earth, which delineates specific outcomes of the space exploration program in seven categories:

1. Computer Technology, 2. Consumer/Home/Recreation, 3. Environmental and Resource Management, 4. Health and Medicine, 5. Industrial Productivity/Manufacturing Technology, 6. Public Safety, and 7. Transportation

Did you know the space shuttle launches will terminate in 2010? Or that the International Space Station is scheduled to be deconstructed in 2016? See the July 15 post on CNN.com’s SciTech Blog, NASA to junk space station in 2016, for more.

Want to know more about space tourism? You are in luck! Just visit the Space Tourism Society web page. Founded in 1996, the society has as its goals building public desire and acquiring the financial and political power to make space tourism available as soon as possible.

Additional resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Superspace; What’s Happening with Hubble?; Phoenix Mission to Mars: Final Seven Minutes of Terror; and Amazing Space.

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We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

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