Using Science to Explore Space with Ready Jet Go!

From a young age, I found myself drawn to the science and exploration of Earth and outer space. When I was three years old, I remember seeing a rainbow for the first time. It was beautiful and piqued my curiosity: Why couldn’t I touch it? Why was it so colorful?

Encouraging this natural curiosity is a great way for parents to expand their children’s knowledge of the universe. As the host and science advisor for Ready Jet Go!, I foster relationships between space science and observation skills, helping kids think and grow in their daily lives.

Here are three ways you can encourage kids to use science to understand our place on (and off!) this planet.

Science gives us tools for understanding nature, and for making decisions based on observations. The scientific method is a way of testing out new ideas and accepting or rejecting them based on evidence. As Jet learns in Ready Jet Go!, using the scientific method can help kids solve any number of problems through a six step process of observation and experimentation.

You don’t have to be a NASA scientist to benefit from this system of thinking. This deductive reasoning can help a kid do everything from trying new vegetables to riding a bike.

Help your kids cultivate their interest in science by connecting the nature they see around them to everyday items in their lives. The laws of physics that create rainbows are the same ones that let us have cell phones and accurate maps. Understanding how rainbows form helps kids learn how light works, which powers nearly all of the technology around us.

Part of being a kid is discovering their place in the world around them. Studying the universe and space science helps solidify a sense of perspective. It’s surprisingly easy to find examples of cosmic perspective in everyday life. Following the Sun’s daily path across the sky from season to season helps us understand that we live on a tilted rotating sphere. Tracking the positions of the Sun and Moon help us visualize that the Sun, Earth, and Moon are all moving in a nearly flat plane.

Understanding these perspectives matters for many reasons. The ecosystems we depend on for food, water, and shelter are in turn critically dependent on the changing seasons caused by the Earth’s tilt. The solar-powered satellites that provide telecommunications, weather forecasts, and maps operate by orbiting Earth.

Spend time with your kids observing the night sky to think beyond our home on Earth. In big cities, you can see bright stars and planets, and notice how they change with time of night and time of year. Go a little further away from bright city lights to darker night skies, and there you can find meteor showers, satellites orbiting the Earth, and a wealth of stars. If you’re having trouble seeing the stars, check out the Ready Jet Go! Space Explorer app. With the app, you and your kids can point your mobile device or tablet to the sky to see the planets and constellations and learn from Jet and his friends.

My favorite tools for observing the night sky are my own eyes and my trusty binoculars. If you can see the path the Milky Way takes across the sky, you can start to get a sense for where the Earth lies in relation to its center and edges, and how our solar system is oriented. With binoculars, you can see Jupiter’s four biggest moons. Watching them orbit Jupiter from night to night lets you see with your own eyes some of the evidence that Galileo used to prove that the Earth goes around the Sun.

Visit a museum, planetarium, or astronomy club where scientists and enthusiasts will be thrilled to talk science with your little ones. The PBS, NASA and National Science Foundation websites all bring cutting edge science to kids and their families.

You don’t have to be a NASA scientist or have a telescope to make exploration of the universe a part of your children’s lives. Simply encouraging curiosity and interest in the world around them can create moments of galactic wonder.