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Learning with Aura

Printable Resources
Educational Activities
Videos
Aura’s Science Topics

Educational Activities

“Exploring Ozone in our Atmosphere” Lessons

These set of lesson plans use real NASA data to help students understand how ozone can be both “good up high and bad nearby.” Students will explore how scientists use data to describe the atmosphere. Students will practice graphing skills to analyze human impacts on ozone concentrations on the ground and high in the atmosphere.

Engineer a Satellite

In this activity, you will select the scientific instruments for your satellite, calculate the power requirements for all the subsystems, and construct a scale model of your very own Earth observing satellite.

Exploring Color Maps: Visualizing the Ozone Hole

Scientists use colors and other representations for data to help interpret and visualize information. In this activity, students create their own color map and discover that selecting a good color scale is essential to understanding data and to communicating science accurately.

Sensors, Circuits, and Satellites

Lessons that integrate inquiry with active-learning experiences to engage students in the properties of electromagnetic energy and remote sensing. The investigations are sequenced to help the learner construct their knowledge about the electromagnetic spectrum while offering real world examples from NASA. Created in collaboration with littleBits™ with companion activities available online

ChemMatters

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Introduces electromagnetic waves, their behaviors, and how scientists visualize these data.

“Exploring Ozone in our Atmosphere”

These set of lesson plans use real NASA data to help students understand how ozone can be both “good up high and bad nearby.” Students will explore how scientists use data to describe the atmosphere. Students will practice graphing skills to analyze human impacts on ozone concentrations on the ground and high in the atmosphere.

Videos

Aura’s Science Topics

Take a deeper dive into the following science topics that the Aura satellite help us to learn more about.

Aura science

Ozone

Aura's instruments are closely monitoring ozone.

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Visualization of Earth as seen from the south pole over Antarctica. Data is overlayed, showing the level of ozone in the area. Centered over Antarctica is a red and orange oval, while the rest of the visualization shows dark and light blues.
This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on Sept. 21, 2023, the day of its maximum extent that year, as calculated by the NASA Ozone Watch team. Moderate ozone losses (orange) are visible amid widespread areas of more potent ozone losses (red).
NASA Earth Observatory
Aura science

Tropospheric  composition

Instruments on NASA satellites, along with airborne and ground-based sensors, are constantly collecting data on major pollutants in our atmosphere.

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A map of the U.S. showing average nitrogen dioxide concentrations for 2022. The data is color-coded. Higher concentrations are in red and lower concentrations in blue.
This map shows average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide for 2022 over the U.S., as detected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite. Higher concentrations are in red and purple. Lower concentrations are in blue.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio