Color Your Universe - Day 1

#ColorWithNASA

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NASA's Color Your Universe

Multiple Choice

Where is NASA Headquarters located?

• Florida

• Texas

• California

• Washington DC

While the main HQ is in Washington DC, there are many other major facilities throughout the country. Including Mission Control in Houston, Texas. As well as this newer facility in Florida.

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NASA Facilities

Multiple Choice

What is a tool we can use to better see far off objects in space?

• telescope

• microscope

• gyroscope

• giant mirror

Telescopes have been used for hundreds of years.

​​First Versions

Telescopes kept getting bigger, allowing us to see and learn more about space.

​​Super-Sized

Launched in 1990, it allowed us to get closer to objects, and avoided light pollution on Earth.

​​Hubble

​Launched in 2021, it used infrared technology to capture images Hubble cannot.

​​James Webb

Multiple Choice

How can we communicate with distant spacecraft?

• Very Big Walkie Talkies

• Cell Phones

• Deep Space Network

• We can't communicate with them yet/

It’s the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world.

The Deep Space Network - or DSN - is NASA’s international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, plus a few that orbit Earth. The DSN also provides radar and radio astronomy observations that improve our understanding of the solar system and the larger universe.

What is the DSN?

Multiple Choice

How many of these large satellite dishes make up the DSN?

• 1

• 3

• 26

• Too many to count.

The DSN has 3 facilities – approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude – around the world. These sites are in California, Spain, and Australia.

The strategic placement of these sites permits constant communication with spacecraft as our planet rotates – before a distant spacecraft sinks below the horizon at one DSN site, another site can pick up the signal and carry on communicating.

The antennas of the Deep Space Network are the indispensable link to explorers venturing beyond Earth. They provide the crucial connection for commanding our spacecraft and receiving their never before seen images and scientific information on Earth, propelling our understanding of the universe, our solar system and ultimately, our place within it.

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Multiple Choice

What does NASA's JPL facility stand for?

• Juvenile Property Listings

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory

• July Planetary Line-up

• Jiggly Pickle Launch

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) - Robotic Space Exploration

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Multiple Choice

One of JPL's creations is the Sentinel 6 - Michael Freilich. What has this been designed to measure?

• The height of the ocean.

• The distance from Pluto to Neptune.

• The distance from asteroids that get too close to Earth.

• How far Voyager-I is getting from Earth.

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Satellite

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Here are a few NASA highlights featured in this image:

• Space can sometimes feel far away from us, so we use science to bring the universe a little bit closer. For example, using telescopes, we can observe space from Earth. And to bring scientific information and pictures back to Earth from space, spacecraft use the Deep Space Network, or DSN. The DSN is a collection of big radio antennas in different parts of the world.

• NASA has 10 main locations, plus its Headquarters in Washington D.C. that work together to help space seem closer to home.

• A U.S.-European collaboration launching in November 2020, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft is set to track sea level and will provide atmospheric data to support weather forecasting and climate models.

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Poll

Which topic today did you find most interesting?

• Deep Space Network

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory

• Sentinel-6

• James Webb Telescope