Alan Shepard, First American in Space (Grades K-12)

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/iams/html/pao/mr3.htm Official NASA portrait of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard. [Courtesy of NASA.]

In 1961, I lived in a small town in Florida called Neptune Beach. On May 5, I remember excitedly watching a small glow rise into the sky to the south and knowing that we had just sent a man into space. That man was Alan B. Shepard, Jr., one of the original seven Mercury astronauts. He was the first American to dare the unknown and enter space. His flight that day was a spectacular feat, even if he didn't even orbit Earth and even though the flight lasted only 15 minutes.

That was Shepard's first flight, but not his last. As part of the Apollo 14 crew, he landed on the moon on February 1971. He became the fifth person to walk on the moon and the first to hit a golf ball there that in his words went for "miles and miles and miles." I guess there is a lot to be said for the effect of the moon's gravity. Shepard died in 1998 at the age of 74.

Connections

Shepard's flight was the first tiny step in the American space program that led to Neil Armstrong's giant leap just eight years later. This makes Shepard's flight a great launching point for exploring space travel and learning about human adaptations to life in space. This is also a good time to study the effects of gravity on Earth and the moon.

Shepard's flight is also a good starting place to look back at the history of spaceflight. This could take you and your students as far back as Leonardo da Vinci or perhaps just back to the 1960s. Keep in mind that Alan Shepard was the first American in space, not the first man. That honor goes to a Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, who was shot into space a little less than a month before Shepard. Our launch was a response to this Russian flight and the beginning of the space race. Questions students may want to examine include, How has space flight changed since then? Where does the space race fit in the cold war? And why have we not been back to the moon since those early days of NASA?

Other interesting connections can be made to the development of new products, not only to the well-known freeze-dried ice cream, but, for example, to a self-righting life raft, a cardiac imaging system, and an advanced wheelchair. Taking a different tack, students can make comparisons between the navigators and explorers of the late 1400s and the 1500s.

Web Resources

1. NASA's Alan Shepard
   
   http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/shepard-alan.html
   This page provides a biography of Shepard and his role in space discoveries.
   
   
2. Alan Shepard was 'a pretty cool customer'
   
   http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/22/obit.shepard.02/
   This article in memory of Alan Shepard focuses on his personality and his relationship with others.
   
   
3. Navigating NASA
   
   http://www.enc.org/features/focus/archive/nasa/
   If you are teaching a unit on aerospace, NASA is a wonderful resource. This cluster of five articles from ENC Focus serves as a guide to what NASA offers. For a great suggestion for a program to implement at your school, go right to the fifth article, "NASA at Night." The other articles--equally as helpful--are "Introducing the NASA Portal," "Revitalizing Education Through NASA Explorer Schools," "NASA Distance Learning Programs for Elementary and Middle School Students," and "Improving Teacher Quality: NASA's Pre-Service Teacher Institute."
   
   

Ready-to-Go Activities

1. CIBL Exercise Catalogue: Friction Activities
   
   http://www.biology.duke.edu/cibl/exercise_catalogue.htm
   Grades 7-12. Among the inquiry-based activities featured at this site are three that deal with the topic of friction. Sliding and Stuttering, Factors Affecting Friction, and Hot Friction allow students to experiment with an area critical to the reentry of space vehicles.
   
   
2. Microgravity
   
   http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/teachers/microgravity/
   Grades 5-12.This online teacher's guide offers a wealth of activities. Microgravity, the name of this site, is the technical term for weightlessness since gravity is not totally absent in space.
   
   
3. Interplanetary Distance&Travel Time
   
   http://explorer.scrtec.org/explorer/explorer-db/html/-447DED81.html
   Grades 5-9. This activity has students calculating distances and travel times based on the movement of a slug. The calculations are related to filling in the blanks in a story about travel.
   
   
4. NASAKids
   
   http://kids.msfc.nasa.gov/
   Grades K-4. This page has lots of fun activities for kids to help them become interested in space. There is biographical and historical information available on the early space program also.
   
   
5. NASA Connect
   
   http://connect.larc.nasa.gov/
   This site offers many activities and lessons for a slightly older audience than for NASAKids. The lessons are coordinated with public-domain television shows that may be taped from PBS channels.
   
   

Classroom Resources from the ENC Collection

1. NASA human spaceflight
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): K - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 009299
   URL: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/index.html
   Up-to-date information on shuttle missions and other activities at NASA are available at this site. One of the links allows you to determine when the space station will be visible from your area.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
2. Consider a career in aerospace
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): 6 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 018441
   URL: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/products/Consider.a.Career.in.Aerospace/
   This NASA site offers a pdf poster encouraging women in aerospace careers. The poster materials also contain activities, and other links present requirements for becoming an astronaut and other aerospace careers. These requirements explain what high school subjects your students should take.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
3. The vestibular system: balance and equilibrium in the gravitational continuum
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 018722
   A student and NASA collaboration produced this CD-ROM about human response to microgravity and motion. There are interactive demonstrations and video clips along with the information about the inner ear system.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   

Teacher Resources from the ENC Collection

1. NASA Earth science enterprise, 2000 education catalog
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): K - Post-Sec. Cost: Free ENC#: 018837
   This book, available free from NASA, outlines all the educational opportunities available from NASA's Education Division. These include teaching materials, workshops, and student research opportunities.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
2. NASA - AMATYC - NSF mathematics explorations 1
   Date: 1999 Grade(s): 8 - Post-Sec. Cost: Free ENC#: 018782
   This free resource book presents real-world math problems in the context of space travel. Students work problems having to do with fuel consumption, cost analysis, and shuttle repair that are categorized by mathematical topic.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
3. NASA Student Involvement Program space flight opportunities: educator's resource guide, national competitions
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 018605
   URL: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/products/Flight.Opportunities.Guide/
   The NSIP is a competition for students. This guide is for teachers interested in having their students compete in developing experiments that can be sent into space.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   

Search Strategies

Find more materials by searching Curriculum Resources on ENC Online using these terms: Astronauts, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), Space, or Space shuttle.

Connections to Standards

Realizing that there are many ways to use this Classroom Calendar entry, we chose these standards because they relate to the entry, in full or in part. If you want to explore the standards further, please use the link(s) provided.

Connections to NSES
Content Standard D: Earth and Space Science: Objects in the sky (K-4)
Content Standard D: Earth and Space Science: Changes in earth and sky (K-4)
Content Standard D: Earth and Space Science: Earth in the solar system (5-8)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Understanding about science and technology (9-12)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Abilities of technological design (5-8)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Abilities of technological design (9-12)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Understanding about science and technology (5-8)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans (K-4)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Abilities of technological design (K-4)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Understanding about science and technology (K-4)