Educator Onboarding
LEO Art Challenge Workshop
ICE 2019: Satellite Tracking, Orbits, and Modeling
SEEC 2019: Satellite Tracking, Orbits, and Modeling
Workshop:ITEC Trek-a-Sat
Workshop: 2018-01-27 Yerkes
Workshop: 2017-10-28 Carthage-Yerkes Electrostatics in Space
Workshop: 2017-06-29-BTCI-Life in Space!
Workshop: 2017-03-11 Yerkes
Workshop: 2017-02-07 SEEC
Workshop: 2017-01-28 Yerkes
Tools You Might Use
Educational Learning
Standards
Documentation
Satellites- Understanding How They Work! MS
Diagrama de temas
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Satellites- Understanding How They Work!
Updated August 2023
Written By: Frances Dellutri, Middle School/Intermediate Level SpacEdge Education Team, April 2016
SpacEdge Topic: Atmosphere, Centripetal Force, Computers, Mathematics, Micro-gravity, Free-fall, Orbital Mechanics, Physics, Satellites, Spacecraft, Weightlessness
Grade (Age) Level: Grades 5-8 (Ages 10-13)
Key Topics Associated with Standards: Collecting, Analyzing and Interpreting Data; Gravitational Interactions; Forces and Motion, Relationship between Energy and Forces
US Standards: NGSS
MS-ESS1-2 http://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/ms-ess1-2-earths-place-universe
MS-ESS1-3 http://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/ms-ess1-3-earths-place-universe
Learn about tracking satellites by using the Trek-A-Sat Activity found in SpacEdge Academy Grades 5-8 Level.
This project will acquaint you with the forces that affect satellites, weightlessness, and the types of satellite orbits. From gravitational pull to scale readings and weight, students will gain an in-depth understanding of many different properties of physics and their application on the satellites orbiting around the Earth.
Index:
1. What do you know about gravity?
2. Introduction to forces and gravitational pull here on Earth!
3. Understanding Centripetal Force
4. What is Weightlessness all about, anyway!
5. Satellites
6. Understanding satellite orbits.
7. Exit slip - Let's find out what you learned.
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Just as you learned that there are always a gravitational pull and the upward tension pull toward the pivot point on a pendulum, this 'tension pull' can also be compared to a pull of an object toward the center of another object it is moving around, or orbiting - this is a gravitational pull.
When an object is moving around another, the object orbiting is also moving forward so there is a 'gravitational vector' and an 'acceleration vector." The acceleration vector keeps the object rotating. The speed or momentum of the object in its circular path keeps the object from allowing gravity to pull the object out of orbit. If the circular momentum of the orbiting object decreases by enough, the object will fall out of orbit and gravity will pull the object out of orbit toward the object it is orbiting.
Here are some interactive games to try your skill at keeping an object moving around another(in a circular motion) just as its gravitational and acceleration vectors are changing!
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Find out how the vectors change with the objects moving around the focus point of the interactive.
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In this video, an astronaut on-board the ISS presents some experiments demonstrating centripetal forces and what happens if an orbiting object (in a circular motion) is released from gravitational pull. The astronaut speaks further about artificial gravity as suggested in some sci-fi movies and stories. Take a look! (The movie is about 7 minutes long.)
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