Living on the Space Station
Students tour the International Space Station and China's Tiangong to learn how engineers keep humans breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping and healthy in free fall.
Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops8 stops
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What students will see and do
Students fly around and through the International Space Station across six stops covering orbit, free fall, life support, food and sleep, health and science, then visit Tiangong and look back at Earth. Aetherion pauses for discussion at Tiangong (designing a better station) and at Earth (the overview effect).
Learning objectives
- Explain that astronauts float because the station is in continuous free fall, not because gravity is absent.
- Describe how the station produces oxygen, removes carbon dioxide and recycles about 98 percent of its water.
- Identify at least three ways microgravity affects the human body and how crews counter them.
- Compare two space station designs and evaluate how each meets the same human needs.
NGSS connections
| MS-LS1-3 | Students connect body systems (skeletal, muscular, circulatory, sensory) to the changes astronauts experience in microgravity and the exercise used to counter them. |
|---|---|
| MS-ETS1-1 | Students define the criteria and constraints of a sealed habitat: air, water, food, exercise, mass limits and safety. |
| MS-ETS1-2 | Students compare how the ISS and Tiangong teams solved the same life-support problems and evaluate the trade-offs. |
Stops on this journey
- A Home in Orbit
- Why Everyone Floats
- Air and Water
- Eating and Sleeping
- Keeping Bodies Strong
- A Laboratory in the Sky
- China's Tiangong (discussion stop)
- The View From Above (discussion stop)
Vocabulary
- microgravity
- free fall
- orbit
- life support
- carbon dioxide
- electrolysis
- module
- overview effect