An Apollo 11 astronaut stands on the Moon and one of the legs of the lunar module can be seen in the corner of the image

Fifty years ago this week, the Apollo 11 astronauts launched on their history-making mission. Saturday, July 20, is the anniversary of that first landing of humans on the Moon; a great milestone to reflect on, as well as an opportunity to look ahead. Read on for some of the ways you can celebrate and learn with NASA!

An audience wears 3-D glasses while in a darkened theater

Go Places

It’s not just science centers that are celebrating the 50th anniversary of humans landing on the Moon. There are events taking place worldwide at libraries, concert halls, baseball stadiums, National Parks, art museums, and on city streets. Find anniversary events near you with this searchable map and calendar.

Sketch of a lunar lander on graph paper with marshmallows, rubber bands and straws scattered around

Do Things

This collection of hands-on activities for all ages will have you throwing water balloons to learn about craters on the Moon, helping actual NASA scientists by mapping the Moon from your own computer, building a model of the Earth-Moon system and seeing what it takes to investigate strange new planets. You can even make your own lunar spacecraft.

The Forward to the Moon With Artemis activity book is a fun way to learn about the Apollo mission that first put people on the Moon and what’s in store for the future. Also, check out these hands-on activities, building challenges and online games!

Animated image of the Moon phases

Focus On the Moon

Love observing the Moon and the rest of the night sky? The Night Sky Network will help you find local astronomy clubs and events. Save the date for International Observe the Moon Night, October 5. If you’re clouded out, you can always make your own Moon to enjoy!

Blue starry background with type that reads Apollo 50 Next Giant Leap

Watch These

NASA TV has a full lineup of Apollo programming. On July 19 at 3 p.m. (EDT), you can watch STEM Forward to the Moon. The half-hour show will feature students enacting simulations of a return to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis program. The accompanying Educator’s Guide has all you need to try the activities from the show at home or in the classroom.

Also fun to watch are vintage recordings from the Apollo program, as well as archived lectures and the kid-friendly “STEM in 30” video series from the National Air And Space Museum.

Scissors, pencils, tape, paper and other materials scattered around. Text overlay reads: Join in July 18, #VirtualMoonshot, A virtual mission to the Moon designed by you! Instagram, Facebook & Twitter

Get Social

Join NASA and educational centers nationwide to build a virtual mission to the Moon on July 18. Follow #VirtualMoonshot on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to take part – or follow along with a host center near you.

Finally, if you’ve wondered what it would have been like to have social media 50 years ago, be sure to follow Relive Apollo 11 for tweets that tell the story of the mission in real time, starting with its July 16 launch!

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TAGS: Apollo 50th, Events, Activities, Education, STEM, Science, Museums,

  • Amelia Chapman
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Illustration of spacecraft against a starry background

Update: March 15, 2019 – The answers to the 2019 NASA Pi Day Challenge are here! View the illustrated answer key


In the News

The excitement of Pi Day – and our annual excuse to chow down on pie – is upon us! The holiday celebrating the mathematical constant pi arrives on March 14, and with it comes the sixth installment of the NASA Pi Day Challenge from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Education Office. This challenge gives students in grades 6-12 a chance to solve four real-world problems faced by NASA scientists and engineers. (Even if you’re done with school, they’re worth a try for the bragging rights.)

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/pi-in-the-sky-6/

Visit the "Pi in the Sky 6" lesson page to explore classroom resources and downloads for the 2019 NASA Pi Day Challenge. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kim Orr | + Expand image

Why March 14?

Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, is what is known as an irrational number. As an irrational number, its decimal representation never ends, and it never repeats. Though it has been calculated to trillions of digits, we use far fewer at NASA. In fact, 3.14 is a good approximation, which is why March 14 (or 3/14 in U.S. month/day format) came to be the date that we celebrate this mathematical marvel.

The first-known Pi Day celebration occurred in 1988. In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi.

The 2019 Challenge

This year’s NASA Pi Day Challenge features four planetary puzzlers that show students how pi is used at the agency. The challenges involve weathering a Mars dust storm, sizing up a shrinking storm on Jupiter, estimating the water content of a rain cloud on Earth and blasting ice samples with lasers!

›Take on the 2019 NASA Pi Day Challenge!

The Science Behind the Challenge

In late spring of 2018, a dust storm began stretching across Mars and eventually nearly blanketed the entire planet in thick dust. Darkness fell across Mars’ surface, blocking the vital sunlight that the solar-powered Opportunity rover needed to survive. It was the beginning of the end for the rover’s 15-year mission on Mars. At its height, the storm covered all but the peak of Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system. In the Deadly Dust challenge, students must use pi to calculate what percentage of the Red Planet was covered by the dust storm.

The Terra satellite, orbiting Earth since 1999, uses the nine cameras on its Multi-Angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, or MISR, instrument to provide scientists with unique views of Earth, returning data about atmospheric particles, land-surface features and clouds. Estimating the amount of water in a cloud, and the potential for rainfall, is serious business. Knowing how much rain may fall in a given area can help residents and first responders prepare for emergencies like flooding and mudslides. In Cloud Computing, students can use their knowledge of pi and geometric shapes to estimate the amount of water contained in a cloud.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a giant storm that has been fascinating observers since the early 19th century, is shrinking. The storm has been continuously observed since the 1830s, but measurements from spacecraft like Voyager, the Hubble Space Telescope and Juno indicate the storm is getting smaller. How much smaller? In Storm Spotter, students can determine the answer to that very question faced by scientists.

Scientists studying ices found in space, such as comets, want to understand what they’re made of and how they interact and react with the environment around them. To see what molecules may form in space when a comet comes into contact with solar wind or sunlight, scientists place an ice sample in a vacuum and then expose it to electrons or ultraviolet photons. Scientists have analyzed samples in the lab and detected molecules that were later observed in space on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. To analyze the lab samples, an infrared laser is aimed at the ice, causing it to explode. But the ice will explode only if the laser is powerful enough. Scientist use pi to figure out how strong the laser needs to be to explode the sample – and students can do the same when they solve the Icy Intel challenge.

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Participate

Join the conversation and share your Pi Day Challenge answers with @NASAJPL_Edu on social media using the hashtag #NASAPiDayChallenge

Blogs and Features

Related Activities

Multimedia

Facts and Figures

Missions and Instruments

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TAGS: Pi Day, K-12, STEM, Science, Engineering, Technology, Math, Pi, Educators, Teachers, Informal Education, Museums, Earth Science, Earth, Climate Change

  • Lyle Tavernier
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Nicole Stott presents at the Association of Science-Technology Centers Annual Conference 2016. Credit: Wayne MacPhail/ASTC

Where do museums shop for animatronic dinosaurs? Test out different planetarium formats? Get the latest news on exhibits to rent? The Association of Science-Technology Centers Annual Conference is one place! NASA’s Museum Alliance was there to spread the word about the Alliance and all the NASA resources available to science centers, as well as to check in with institutions already featuring NASA content. Here are a few highlights:

NASA’s Journey to Mars and Universe of Learning booths were hot spots. Institutes interested in presenting the future of human space exploration, answering big questions about how our universe works, or taking a virtual tour via Eyes on Exoplanets kept the staff busy.

Amelia Chapman talks with attendees at the 2016 ASTC Conference

Attendees learned how they could get involved with various NASA programs designed for museums and science centers.

Museums were excited to sign up for the new GLOBE Observer citizen science app and get their guests involved in collecting real Earth data. (But you don’t have to be with a museum to use the app or these resources!)

At the Live Demonstration Hour, actor Douglas Coler performed a play about the Gemini 4 spacewalk, which recently earned playwright Chris Bresky from the Adler Planetarium an award from the International Museum Theater Alliance.

Also at the demo hour, the Orlando Science Center’s Stephanie Kazmierzak and her four brave volunteers wowed the crowd with this engineering demonstration/party trick.

The agency’s Competitive Program for Science Museums, Planetariums, and NASA Visitor Centers provides funding in support of NASA-related content. (Check out the Map of Awardees to see what NASA content might be in a museum near you.) Many of the grantees attended the conference and shared project updates.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, for instance, just opened its International Space Station exhibit, Beyond Spaceship Earth, and lets visitors see what its like to be an astronaut. Can’t make it to the museum? There’s an app for that!

The Discover NASA exhibit for libraries has been reaching about 20,000 people at each site it visits, with hosts putting on all kinds of related special programming. 

Another awardee, GirlStart, provides students with STEM learning via after school classes, festivals and summer camps. Its DeSTEMber celebration is available for anyone, anytime. The daily hands-on activities are designed for families to do at home, together.

With more than 600 members in nearly 50 countries, the Association of Science-Technology Centers has quite a lot going on. Luckily, there’s an online search tool so you can find out what’s happening at a member center near you! Maybe you can even see what dinosaur they ended up picking out.

At a museum, science center, library, camp or other informal education institution? Learn how you can join the more than 700 organizations participating in NASA’s Museum Alliance, here.

TAGS: Association of Science-Technology Centers, Conference, Museums, Science Centers, Museum Alliance, CP4SMP

  • Amelia Chapman
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GLOBE Observer App

At museums, people can get involved with NASA science and participate in hands-on learning, and now, thanks to a new app from the agency, they can take the experience with them through citizen science.

The GLOBE Observer app invites people of all ages around the world to contribute to the agency’s Earth-science missions by making their own observations about the planet to complement those made by satellites. Students and others have already been collecting, sharing, and analyzing Earth data on the GLOBE program website for more than 20 years through schools, museums and after-school programs. The app provides a new way for individuals to join in and add to the data sets of more than 100 million measurements.

The GLOBE Observer app will eventually feature a number of citizen-science projects, but the inaugural project, called GLOBE Clouds, will ask users to collect local data that can help scientists interpret satellite observations of clouds – a critical indicator for understanding climate and climate change. No special knowledge is needed to use the app, but participants will probably learn something new! The app walks users through recording sky conditions and cloud types, plus taking photos of what they see. Future projects on the app will let citizen scientists assist with monitoring land-cover and mosquito populations.

Museums and science organizations are getting involved too by setting up accounts that let teams of citizen scientists collect data on their behalf. In fact, in honor of International Science Center and Science Museum Day (November 10, 2016) people are encouraged to register for the app through their local science institutions to join a worldwide experiment.

Get started using GLOBE Observer by downloading the app, available for iOS and Android devices. Find out more during a Facebook Live event on the NASA Earth page on September 12 at 3:30 p.m. PDT that will introduce the project, the missions it supports and answer audience questions.

At a museum, science center, library, camp or other informal education institution? Learn how to put together your own GLOBE Observer team account here, or how you can join the more than 700 organizations participating in NASA’s Museum Alliance here.

TAGS: Citizen Science, Mobile App, Museums, Science Centers, Earth Science, Earth, Climate Change

  • Amelia Chapman
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A young visitor at Explore JPL poses with a cutout of an astronaut on Mars.

Our last blog highlighted some of the great STEM exhibits and events members of NASA’s Museum Alliance have going on – and how summer is a perfect time to check them out! In fact, for school-aged children, spending the summer learning new things, building new skills, and staying active is also of academic benefit.

July 14 is National Summer Learning Day. As first lady Michelle Obama points out in her message below, taking a break from learning over the summer puts kids at a significant disadvantage when they go back to school.

Luckily, the museums, libraries, observatories and parks of NASA’s Museum Alliance offer an incredible range of summer learning opportunities for students!

Summer camps let kids dig into a theme – they can spend a week being Mars explorers, roboticists, inventors, even "Junior Rebels" investigating the explosions, lasers, holograms and intergalactic space travel of Star Wars.  One-day camps, overnight opportunities, camps for pre-schoolers and their adults, teen camps, and chances to mentor younger campers – there’s something for all ages and interests. Summer also brings special festivals, increased drop-in opportunities at maker spaces, and the chance to use the break from “school night” bedtimes to join a star party. 

Use the Museum Alliance Events Near Me resource to see what our members have going on this summer, or check out the sortable list of organizations to see which are near you.

At a museum, science center, library, camp or other informal education institution? Learn how you can join the more than 700 organizations participating in NASA’s Museum Alliance, here.

TAGS: summer camp, summer learning day, learning gap, museum alliance, museums, planetariums

  • Amelia Chapman
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Screen grab of the NASA Museum Alliance "Events Near Me" map

You’ve probably heard about some of the fascinating missions and science happening at NASA, but wouldn’t it be great if you could see it in person? You can!

Every day, hundreds of museums, planetariums, observatories, libraries and other institutions participating in NASA’s Museum Alliance offer exhibits, planetarium shows and events featuring NASA science, technology and engineering. As the school year comes to a close, you can keep students – and learners of all ages – engaged by visiting your local informal education institutions. So make May the month you plan your next museum adventure and support organizations that bring the inspiration of NASA to you! Not sure where to start? Use the Museum Alliance's "Map of Members" to find destinations near you or explore the dynamic “Events Near Me” map, which lets you search by date to find the latest offerings.

For example, this month you could check out the new exhibits Out of this World: A Space Adventure at The Living Arts & Science Center in Lexington, Kentucky, or the Discover NASA traveling exhibition at the Auburn Public Library in Maine. You could experience “Intergalactic: A Space Odyssey” in the digital dome theater of Mid-America Science Museum in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Or, also this month, join the fun in California at the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s Space Day 2016, or sign up for the New Mexico Museum of Space History’s Rocketeer Academy summer camps.

Every year, more visits are made to U.S. museums – more than 850 million – than to all major sporting events and theme parks combined. Americans love their museums - get out there and see why!

At a museum, science center, library, camp or other informal education institution? Learn how you can join the more than 700 organizations participating in NASA’s Museum Alliance, here.

TAGS: International Museum Day, Museums, Events, NASA, JPL, STEM, Informal Education,

  • Amelia Chapman
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