All About Apollo - Celebrating World Space Week, October 4-10 Vol. 6 #2

Our Posterity = Our Children

Posterity comes from Middle English posterite, from Anglo-French pusterite, from Latin posterus ("coming after")

Though Fall has been upon us now for a few weeks, it sure doesn't feel like it in South Florida! No worries though, there are other things that we can be excited about. One being World Space Week. According to the website, the week is defined as "an international celebration of science and technology, and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition."

Before the world had World Space Week there was only "Spaceweek", which celebrated the first moon landing. It was first observed in 1980 and by the next year the Spaceweek National Headquarters was developed and was now organizing yearly events. By 1999, "Spaceweek" had spread to over 15 nations and it is also when the UN National General Assembly decided that Oct.4-10 would be known annually as World Space Week.

This year's theme is "The Moon: Gateway to the Stars", which I am sure is not coincidental, since 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and mankind's first steps on the Moon.

The Apollo Missions:

there were 11 space flights.
they resulted in 12 astronauts walking on the moon.
first launch was in 1968.
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon.
final launch was in December of 1972.

NASA.gov has some great pictures, videos and even audio from the Apollo missions!

Topics to look forward to this month:

The Moon - NASA's Artemis program and humans visiting the Moon again in 2024.

Stars - the building blocks of our galaxy.

Black holes- how scary are they and what would happen if you fell into one.

Let's Build a Rocket

Let's build a rocket using materials like balloons, plastic straws, tape and paper clips to give our children an understanding how rockets work and the relevance Newton's Third Law has to them. For complete instructions on this activity go to the Teach Engineering.org.

Code with Tynker and win a chance to chat with a real NASA expert!

Tynker has a cool challenge to celebrate World Space Week that is suitable for grades K-12. The mission is to tell a story as if they were an Artemis Astronaut on the Lunar Gateway. It began on September 29th and will close on Sunday, October 13 at 11:59 pm Pacific Time, so there is still plenty of time!

Click here for 1-8

Click here for 6-12

Did you know...

On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. It was about the size of a beach ball and took 98 minutes to orbit the earth. The launch of Sputnik began the United States and Russia's race to space. Check out this TedEd video!