NASA Explorer Schools educator Barbara Dire from Forest Heights Elementary School led her school through another successful NASA Family Science Night. Forest Heights starts each school year with this event to introduce new families to NASA and rekindle the NASA spark. This year they had a Digital Learning Network session with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Pasadena, Calif. The event stressed to the families that NASA still has a mission. Most of the parents thought the last shuttle mission meant the end of NASA. After the DLN session, students had a lot of fun constructing rockets. There were 212 students, parents and teachers present at this very successful NASA Family Science Night.
Link to the NASA Explorer Schools Virtual Campus home page.
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, NASA Explorer Schools and the LE&RN project are hosting a 60-minute Web seminar on Sept. 27, 2011, at 8 p.m. EDT. Investigate the characteristics of quadratic functions to solve real-world problems involving the parabolic flight path of NASA’s Weightless Wonder C-9 jet. Get an overview of a student investigation, solve related quadratic equations and evaluate and graph quadratic functions. A graphing calculator will be used to demonstrate concepts; however, you do not need a calculator for this professional development seminar.
NASA Explorer Schools invites students in grades 9-12 from across the U.S. and Departments of Defense and State schools to participate in a special live video web chat with Larry Dungan, project manager and electrical engineer designer for the Active Response Gravity Offload System. Dungan will answer student questions about ARGOS, a computer-controlled overhead crane system that allows a human test subject to move in a simulated reduced-gravity environment, such as the moon, Mars or space.
Teachers from 14 NASA Explorer Schools have been selected for the 2011 School Recognition Award for their contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools project is hosting a 60-minute Web seminar, Smart Skies, on Sept. 22, 2011, at 8 p.m. EDT. Learn how to use an innovative air traffic control simulator to engage your students as they explore the mathematics involved in the role of an air traffic controller. In the three-plane problem featured in this lesson, the challenge is to change routes and speeds to line up the planes safely, with proper spacing, at a given route intersection.
On June 10, 2011, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft pointed the LRO narrow angle cameras to capture a dramatic sunrise view of Tycho crater.
Vin Urbanowski, NASA Explorer Schools educator from the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering in Stamford, Conn., created a lesson, The Engineer Who Became an Artist: A 
The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA’s Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet — a planet orbiting two stars — 200 light-years from Earth.
NASA is ready to move forward with the development of the Space Launch System — an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.