Resources by European Space Agency (ESA)

Taking the pulse of the planet (14-16)

These resources from the European Space Agency climate change initiative education resource pack allow students to learn about how data can be collected by sensors and how the orbit of satellites affect the details that can be obtained - Taking the Pulse of the Planet. 

The first activity is text...

Taste in space

For astronauts, all their food and drink needs to be carried to the International Space Station (ISS). Eating is an important part of crew morale and the one communal time when they share both a meal and talk with each other. But from the early 1960s, astronauts found that their taste buds did not seem to be as...

Tell-tale signs of a shooting star: comets, meteors and craters in the solar system

In this activity, children learn that a shooting star or meteor is a piece of rock that lights up as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere. They also work scientifically to investigate how craters are formed when a meteor...

The carbon cycle

These resources from the European Space Agency climate change initiative education resource pack allow students to learn about the carbon cycle and the key to controlling climate change by managing it and using it to identify how to reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere. How carbon moves through the carbon...

The discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole

In this set of activities, pupils will learn about ozone and the impacts – good and bad – it has on life on Earth.

Activities are:

• finding out about ozone and how it is measured and introducing the story of the Antarctic ozone hole
• investigating the effectiveness of sunscreen
• ...

The Eduspace Image Catalogue Viewer

The Eduspace Image Catalogue Viewer offers access to ArcExplorer which is a freeware used to display and analyse layers of Geographical Information Systems (GIS).  ArcExplorer is a geographic data explorer developed by Environmental Systems...

The ESA/ESO Astronomy Exercise Series

The object of this resource, produced by ESA and ESO, is to present various small projects that will pass on some of the excitement and satisfaction in scientific discovery, to students. Using elementary geometrical and physical considerations, students will be able to derive answers that are comparable with the...

The Greenhouse Effect

This short animation film joins the alien, Paxi, as he investigates the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases and the effect they have on the Earth’s atmosphere. He explores how human activity, such as cars, factories, and food production have increased the amount of carbon dioxide trapped in the...

The greenhouse effect and its consequences - Investigating global warming

This set of activities from the European Space Agency includes hands-on experiments. Students are guided to interpret satellite images to better understand the overall effects of global warming.

In the first activity, students demonstrate to themselves the greenhouse effect. The experiment is complemented by...

The ice is melting

In this set of four activities from the European Space Agency, students explore the impacts of global warming and melting ice on the Earth. They learn the difference between land ice and sea ice, and will investigate the respective effects of these melting. They then design their own experiment to examine how...