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Not content with shapes in two or three dimensions, mathematicians like to explore objects in any number of spatial dimensions. Now they have discovered shapes of constant width in any dimension, which roll like a wheel despite not being round

4 Min Read Slow Your Student’s ‘Summer Slide’ and Beat Boredom With NASA STEM Creating and testing soda-straw rockets is a fun way for younger students to avoid the “summer slide” and stay engaged in STEM during summer vacation. Credits: NASA

The school year has come to an end, and those long summer days are stretching ahead like an open runway. Parents and educators often worry about the “summer slide,” the concept that students may lose academic ground while out of school. But summer doesn’t mean students’ imaginations have to stay grounded!

Are you hoping to slow the summer slide or simply to beat back boredom with some fun options that will also keep young minds active? NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement has pulled together this collection of hands-on activities and interesting resources to set students up for a stellar summer vacation. Read on for ways to keep students entertained and engaged, from learning about NASA’s exciting missions, to exploring the world, to making some out-of-this-world art and more.

Take NASA With You on Summer Vacation

Whether you’re whiling away the hours on a quiet summer day or setting out on a travel adventure, NASA offers fun resources for young explorers to learn while passing the time.

Prepare for air travel with the Four Forces of Flight, a set of four activities explaining the forces that make airplanes work, and NASA’s Junior Pilot Program, in which Orville the flying squirrel teaches youngsters about sustainable aviation that’s making airplanes safer and faster. Students can also learn about NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft, which will fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the sound of sonic booms to mere “sonic thumps,” and the whole family can sign up as virtual passengers on NASA’s upcoming flights through the NASA Flight Log.

Traveling to somewhere new? Astronauts living and working in low Earth orbit take many photographs of Earth as it rotates. Explore the world using the Explore Astronaut Photography interactive map, or test geography knowledge through the “Where in the World” Expedition I and Expedition II interactive quizzes.

Of course, some kids prefer to kick back with a good book while on the couch, at the beach, in the backseat, or on a plane – and NASA is ready with reading material! Kids aged 3 to 8 can learn about the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will return humans to the Moon with the “Hooray for SLS” children’s book and related activities. Students of all ages are invited to take their imaginations on a lunar adventure with fictional astronaut Callie Rodriguez through the First Woman graphic novel series.

Blast Boredom With STEM Crafts and Creativity

Making, baking, coloring, or drawing – there are plenty of ways to keep kids’ artistic abilities engaged while learning.

Students can download and create their own Artemis illustrations through Learn How to Draw Artemis, featuring the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, and younger kids can learn the ABCs of human spaceflight with the Commercial Crew A to Z Activity and Coloring Booklet. Learn about the search for life in the universe while getting creative and colorful with Astrobiology Coloring and Drawing Pages.

If crafts are more appealing, create and launch a soda-straw rocket and use printable templates to build a model of the Orion spacecraft or the Parker Solar Probe. Kids can even create a sundial and use the Sun to tell time on a sunny day.

Finally, summer isn’t complete without a sweet treat, so bake some sunspot cookies. Real sunspots are not made of chocolate, but in this recipe, they are!

Hungry for More?

Don’t let the summer doldrums get you down. NASA STEM offers an entire universe of activities, resources, and opportunities for STEM fans at a variety of grade levels. Check out the NASA STEM Search and discover more NASA STEM categories below.

Explore the NASA STEM Search Now Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA

For Students Grades K-4

For Students Grades 5-8

For Students Grades 9-12

Learning Resources

Tribalism can be toxic, yet we need more of it if we are to meet today’s global challenges, argues one anthropologist. His research reveals how to create a “teratribe”

Tribalism can be toxic, yet we need more of it if we are to meet today’s global challenges, argues one anthropologist. His research reveals how to create a “teratribe”

Find out what's going on at the International Space Station.

“I feel that my larger purpose at NASA, which I've felt since I came on as an intern, is to leave NASA a better place than I found it." — Mallory Carbon, Management and Program Analyst, NASA Headquarters

In order to explain the presence of these heavier elements today, it’s necessary to find phenomena that can produce them. One type of event that fits the bill is a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the most powerful class of explosion in the universe.

A robot named Musashi with a human-like "skeleton" and "musculature" can perform basic driving tasks – but this isn’t the safest approach to autonomous transport

A robot named Musashi with a human-like "skeleton" and "musculature" can perform basic driving tasks – but this isn’t the safest approach to autonomous transport

Meteoroids are difficult objects for aerospace and geophysics researchers like us to study, because we can’t usually predict when and where they will hit the atmosphere. But on very rare occasions, we can study artificial objects that enter the atmosphere much like a meteoroid would.

6 Min Read Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb

This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows different structural details of the Crab Nebula.

New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion.

A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the team gathered data that is helping to clarify the Crab Nebula’s history.

The Crab Nebula is the result of a core-collapse supernova from the death of a massive star. The supernova explosion itself was seen on Earth in 1054 CE and was bright enough to view during the daytime. The much fainter remnant observed today is an expanding shell of gas and dust, and outflowing wind powered by a pulsar, a rapidly spinning and highly magnetized neutron star.

The Crab Nebula is also highly unusual. Its atypical composition and very low explosion energy previously have been explained by an electron-capture supernova — a rare type of explosion that arises from a star with a less-evolved core made of oxygen, neon, and magnesium, rather than a more typical iron core.

“Now the Webb data widen the possible interpretations,” said Tea Temim, lead author of the study at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The composition of the gas no longer requires an electron-capture explosion, but could also be explained by a weak iron core-collapse supernova.”

Image A: Crab Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI) This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows different structural details of the Crab Nebula. The supernova remnant is comprised of several different components, including doubly ionized sulfur (represented in green), warm dust (magenta), and synchrotron emission (blue). Yellow-white mottled filaments within the Crab’s interior represent areas where dust and doubly ionized sulfur coincide. The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 1714. Studying the Present to Understand the Past

Past research efforts have calculated the total kinetic energy of the explosion based on the quantity and velocities of the present-day ejecta. Astronomers deduced that the nature of the explosion was one of relatively low energy (less than one-tenth that of a normal supernova), and the progenitor star’s mass was in the range of eight to 10 solar masses — teetering on the thin line between stars that experience a violent supernova death and those that do not.

However, inconsistencies exist between the electron-capture supernova theory and observations of the Crab, particularly the observed rapid motion of the pulsar. In recent years, astronomers have also improved their understanding of iron core-collapse supernovae and now think that this type can also produce low-energy explosions, providing that the stellar mass is adequately low.

Webb Measurements Reconcile Historic Results

To lower the level of uncertainty surrounding the Crab’s progenitor star and nature of the explosion, the team led by Temim used Webb’s spectroscopic capabilities to hone in on two areas located within the Crab’s inner filaments.

Theories predict that because of the different chemical composition of the core in an electron-capture supernova, the nickel to iron (Ni/Fe) abundance ratio should be much higher than the ratio measured in our Sun (which contains these elements from previous generations of stars). Studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s measured the Ni/Fe ratio within the Crab using optical and near-infrared data and noted a high Ni/Fe abundance ratio that seemed to favor the electron-capture supernova scenario.

The Webb telescope, with its sensitive infrared capabilities, is now advancing Crab Nebula research. The team used MIRI’s spectroscopic abilities to measure the nickel and iron emission lines, resulting in a more reliable estimate of the Ni/Fe abundance ratio. They found that the ratio was still elevated compared to the Sun, but only modestly and much lower in comparison to prior estimates.

The revised values are consistent with electron-capture, but do not rule out an iron core-collapse explosion from a similarly low-mass star. (Higher-energy explosions from higher-mass stars are expected to produce ratios closer to solar abundances.) Further observational and theoretical work will be needed to distinguish between these two possibilities.

“At present, the spectral data from Webb covers two small regions of the Crab, so it’s important to study much more of the remnant and identify any spatial variations,” said Martin Laming of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and a co-author of the paper. “It would be interesting to see if we could identify emission lines from other elements, like cobalt or germanium.”

Video: Crab Nebula Deconstructed

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This video shows the different major components that compose the Crab Nebula as observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Despite decades of study, this supernova remnant continues to puzzle astronomers as they seek to understand what kind of progenitor star and explosion produced this dynamic environment. Image- NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Tea Temim (Princeton University) Video- Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Mapping the Crab’s Current State

Besides pulling spectral data from two small regions of the Crab Nebula’s interior to measure the abundance ratio, the telescope also observed the remnant’s broader environment to understand details of the synchrotron emission and the dust distribution.

The images and data collected by MIRI enabled the team to isolate the dust emission within the Crab and map it in high resolution for the first time. By mapping the warm dust emission with Webb, and even combining it with the Herschel Space Observatory’s data on cooler dust grains, the team created a well-rounded picture of the dust distribution: The outermost filaments contain relatively warmer dust, while cooler grains are prevalent near the center.

“Where dust is seen in the Crab is interesting because it differs from other supernova remnants, like Cassiopeia A and Supernova 1987A,” said Nathan Smith of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the paper. “In those objects, the dust is in the very center. In the Crab, the dust is found in the dense filaments of the outer shell. The Crab Nebula lives up to a tradition in astronomy: The nearest, brightest, and best-studied objects tend to be bizarre.”

These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 1714.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

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View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Media Contacts

Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Abigail Major – amajor@stsci.edu / Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Related Information

Infographic: Massive Stars: Engines of Creation

Articles: Explore Other Webb Supernova Articles

3D visualization video : “Crab Nebula: The Multiwavelength Structure of a Pulsar Wind Nebula”

Sonification: Multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula

Explore More: Crab Nebula resources from NASA’s Universe of Learning

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Mission Page

Related For Kids

What is a supernova?

Interactive: Explore the Crab Nebula in multiple wavelengths

Activity: Create a stellar life cycle bookmark and bracelet

Activity: Flipbook resource for stellar evolution

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Last Updated

Jun 17, 2024

Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

Related Terms

• Astrophysics
• Crab Nebula
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
• Nebulae
• Neutron Stars
• Pulsars
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