Oct 14

Internet Final Frontier for Space Exploration
Sun Review October 14, 2000

After completing the first manned space flight in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin commented "I could have gone on flying through space forever". He might have said the same thing about the Internet.

Here are a few sites to help you explore outer space on the Internet. NASA's website is a logical place to start for space afficionados.

NASA Kids (kids.msfc.nasa.gov) is an on-line or printable resource designed for students from Kindergarten to 8th grade. Join the Kids' Club to receive an e-mail from NASA every week - they'll even send you a special message on your birthday! Just be sure to get your parents' permission before you sign up. A fun place for older kids to start their space exploration is "Liftoff to Space". Teachers' Corner offers a fun way for children to learn about NASA's activities and science, using interactive tools and kid-attractive pages, and Thursday's Classroom (www.thursdaysclassroom.com) provides the connection between NASA's latest research and the classroom environment.

CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a solar system simulator (www.space.jpl.nasa.gov), a NASA/JPL/Caltech spyglass on the cosmos. Select your viewpoint, target, date and time to have the simulator create a color image of your favorite planet or satellite.

The Canadian Space Agency (www.space.gc.ca) offers information on Canadian space initiatives, and also has a special KidSpace featuring educator's resources and a Space Playground. Cosmofans can tune into webcasts with Canadian Astronauts and other members of Space Team Canada.

The newly redesigned and enhanced website from the publishers of Astronomy magazine can be found at Astronomy.com. At the heart of Astronomy.com are eight core content areas: news, feature stories, observing, an image gallery, parent and teacher resources, Astro for Kids, a beginners section, and the AstroShops. These eight sections offer a wide variety of information, from how to buy and maintain your own telescope to what's happening in tonight's sky. Astronomy.com's easy to navigate, highly dynamic and interactive format makes browsing this website a stellar experience!

If you're interested in space and astronomy news but feel like there's just too much going on to stay on top of it all, you should visit Universe Today (www.universetoday.com). Instead of writing in-depth articles, Universe Today provides an overview and links to sites where you can get more details. In only 10 minutes a day you'll be completely up to date on all the breaking news in the space industry.

Astronomy Links (astronomylinks.com) has more than 500 Astronomy and space related links from around the world. Especially useful sites are marked as "Recommended", indicating that the staff of Astronomylinks.com found the content of those sites especially compelling, and the Stellar Links Awards are given out for what they consider to be the best astronomy and space related links on the Internet.

Join the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free screensaver that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. How does it work? The screensaver grabs a chunk of data from the SETI@home database, analyzes the data and then reports the results. When you need your computer back, the screensaver instantly gets out of the way and only continues its analysis when you are finished with your work.

And locally, visit the Interior Space and Science Centre in person or virtually at www2.junction.net/~vernsci