About This Daily Classroom Special
The Need to Explore was created by Buzz Eyler, a former Teachers Network  web mentor, to provide teachers with a project to meet a number of geography and social studies curriculum standards. If you are a teacher or other educator, you may freely link to this address, but please do not re-publish for personal gain or compensation.

The Future Is Now

Just as in Columbus's time, we are continuing to explore and discover new places. However, we have now turned our attention to space in addition to our own world. We have sent satellites to almost all of the planets, the sun and out past our solar system.

A number of nations on Earth are building a space station which will orbit above us. The links below will help you learn about that project and help you with your activities which follow.

Bookmark this page now.

• Check out this link to track the flight of the Space Station.

• Want to see the Space Station from your backyard? Here is how and when.

• Here is another way of viewing the Space Station

• Just as Columbus had help from another country, the International Space Station is being build by a number of countries. Some of them are in Europe. Our space agency is NASA. The Europeans have ESA. Read about why Europe is helping.

• To see what countries are involved, you will need to visit this site.

• To keep yourself up-to-date on development of the Space Station, return to this NASA site often.

You are now ready to go to the next page and pick some projects to do. Good luck and have fun.

Show me the projects.