NASA

In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established. Today, 50 years on, NASA has a host of programmers to showcase its achievements.

One of the objectives of NASA has been to interact with the community through extensive outreach programmers impacting the thoughts and imagination of generations of children the world over. Encouraging kids to dream big and study hard, through competitions, designed to get children thinking about space — and by extension, math and science — in new ways is what NASA aims at. Each year over 60,000 students get to directly interact with NASA’s educational opportunities.

NASA has numerous activities, games, amazing stories, study material, competitions, student conferences and scholarships for different age groups. From providing an opportunity of asking an astronaut on the space station a question, assisting students with homework and projects, assembling paper model spacecraft to interactive websites with every information on space and space related subjects, NASA is a must visit site for the curious child.

Importantly October 4 to 10 is celebrated annually in some 50 nations as World Space Week to mark the anniversary of two great milestones of humanity’s exploration of space. The first human-made Earth satellite, SPUTNIK I being launched on October 4, 1957, and the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, coming into force on October 10, 1967. Special World Space Week instructional materials in several languages with activities for all grades are made available to schools at no charge.

You can begin your own space odyssey and lucky for you that you need not even venture into space for it — just get to a computer and connect to NASA. This is one place where the sky is certainly not the limit – only a beginning to the limitless!