Museum & Informal Education Alliance

Get your monthly overview of the night sky.

Do you love making art and using your imagination? So do we! Every NASA mission starts with a creative idea about how to explore something in a new way. Get creative and submit your art before the deadline at the end of the month!

National Space Day dedicates the first Friday of May to the extraordinary achievements, benefits and opportunities in the exploration and use of space.

May the Fourth be with you! Star Wars Day is a fun excuse to celebrate the cinematic universe- and the even more amazing real universe.

A few fun connections:

• "May the Force = Mass x Acceleration" Teachable Moment blog post

• Brett Kennedy, a roboticist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on which Star Wars robots actually have the right stuff for space travel.
• Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, weighs in on the best way to build a Death Star and navigate through asteroids.
• BB8 and a friend visited JPL to learn about exploration of our solar system and meet other robots, including robots that explore Mars.
• An article about more NASA/Star Wars connections
• Star Wars Day site

May 5th celebrates the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, and his flight aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft.  Learn more about the flight on NASA's page.

Throughout the year, thousands of student interns contribute to NASA's missions of human spaceflight, aeronautics, space science and Earth research. NASA interns use their creativity and innovation to work on projects that impact NASA’s mission, like sending the first woman and next man to the Moon. Be part of an amazing virtual team while contributing to NASA missions. Learn more at https://intern.nasa.gov/.  (And for internships at NASA JPL, visit https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/internships/)
 
Visit the 10 Things You Can Do Now to Prepare for a NASA Internship webpage. 
 

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Of course the ISS Expedition 42 crew had to do this for their fun poster.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti reads from Douglas Adams's “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” for Towel Day from the European laboratory Columbus on the International Space Station.

The science of a wet towel in space.