Space for Schools: British Columbia matches free live space tools to the Big Ideas and content of the BC science curriculum, from Grade 1 to Physics 12. Each card has a 10-minute activity.
Curriculum links last reviewed November 2026.
Patterns in the local sky in Grade 1, and the Earth's axis, rotation and orbit in Grade 4.
A live 3D Moon, lit the way it is right now.
notice that the Moon's shape changes in a pattern from night to night.
Show today's Moon on the globe and ask the class to draw it. Send home the Moon diary: each evening, with a grown-up, look for the Moon and draw it. After a week, line the drawings up. What pattern do you see?
How to tell a plane, a planet, a satellite and a star apart.
name the common things we see in the sky, such as the Sun, the Moon, stars, planets, planes and satellites.
Look at the pictures in the guide together. Play "What's that light?": describe a light (it blinks, it moves slowly, it does not twinkle) and the class guesses what it is. Which ones can we see in the daytime?
Where the ISS is right now, and how fast it is going.
explain that day and night come from the Earth's rotation, and compare our day with the space station's 90-minute laps.
Put the tracker on the board and find British Columbia. Is it day or night there now? The station goes round the Earth about 16 times a day, so its crew see about 16 sunrises. Use the worksheet to work out how many they see in a school week.
Every upcoming eclipse, and how much of the Sun will be covered from your town.
explain how the positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon cause eclipses.
Find the next eclipse on the tracker. With a lamp, a globe and a small ball, show how the Moon can block the Sun (a solar eclipse) or move into the Earth's shadow (a lunar eclipse). Which kind is safe to look at directly?
Two of the Grade 6 Big Ideas: the solar system as part of the Milky Way, and Newton's three laws of motion.
A live map of the solar system, with every working deep-space spacecraft where it is today.
describe the solar system as one small part of the Milky Way galaxy, and get a sense of its scale.
Open the map and zoom out until the whole solar system fits. Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft, has been travelling since 1977, yet it would take tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest star. And the Milky Way holds hundreds of billions of stars: discuss what that means.
Real-time 3D globes of the Moon, Mars and the Sun.
explain that gravity is a force that pulls objects together, and that it pulls less strongly on the Moon and Mars than on the Earth.
Open the Moon and Mars globes. Gravity on the Moon is about a sixth as strong as on the Earth, and on Mars about two fifths. If you can jump 30 cm high in the gym, how high could you jump on each world? Use the worksheet to compare weights.
Every upcoming rocket launch, and when it lifts off.
use Newton's three laws to explain how a rocket lifts off and speeds up.
Find the next launch on the schedule. Blow up a balloon and let it go: the air pushes back on the balloon, just as a rocket's exhaust pushes it up (the third law). Which law explains why the rocket speeds up as it burns fuel and gets lighter?
Where the ISS is right now, and how fast it is going.
explain with Newton's first law and gravity why the space station keeps going round the Earth.
Watch the station move on the tracker. Without gravity it would fly off in a straight line (the first law); gravity keeps pulling it round. Canada's robotic arm, Canadarm2, helped build the station. Swing a soft ball on a string to feel the pull that keeps it in a circle.
Light in Science 8, the big bang in Science 10, the Earth, Moon and Sun in Earth Sciences 11, and gravitation and circular motion in Physics 12.
The telescopes working in space, from Hubble to JWST, and what each one is for.
explain how telescopes collect light and other radiation from space, and how astronomers turn it into data.
Pick two telescopes from the list that see different kinds of light. What does each collect, and what has it found? Science 10 students: describe how the data gets from the telescope to astronomers on the Earth, and what it can show about the big bang.
A live 3D Moon, lit the way it is right now.
explain how the Earth, Moon and Sun system causes phases, eclipses and tides.
Show today's Moon and its phase. Where are the Sun and Moon pulling on the oceans today? Predict whether this week's tides are spring tides (the biggest range) or neap tides (the smallest), then check a tide table for a harbour on the BC coast.
Orbit details for thousands of satellites: height, period and inclination.
describe how satellites are used to study changes on the Earth, such as ice, forests and the oceans.
Search the directory for an Earth-observation satellite, such as RADARSAT-2. Note its height, its orbit and its period. Why are most Earth-watching satellites in polar orbits? List three changes in BC that satellites could help track.
Real-time 3D globes of the Moon, Mars and the Sun.
explain the difference between weight and apparent weight, and why astronauts in orbit feel weightless.
Work out g at the space station's height with the worksheet: it is still about 90% of g at the ground. So why do astronauts float? Compare a falling elevator with the station falling round the Earth. What would a bathroom scale read in each?
Orbit details for thousands of satellites: height, period and inclination.
use Newton's law of universal gravitation to explain why satellites farther out take longer to go round.
Look up the heights and periods of the ISS, a GPS satellite and a geostationary satellite. The worksheet plots T2 against r3 for five satellites: from the slope, work out the mass of the Earth.
Low, medium, geostationary and polar orbits, and what each one is used for.
use centripetal force and acceleration to find the height of a geostationary orbit.
Compare the orbits on the page. A geostationary satellite goes round once a day, so it stays over one spot. Set gravity equal to the centripetal force and solve for the orbital radius with the worksheet, then check it against a real TV satellite.
These are our suggestions for where each tool fits. Always preview a page before using it with a class: some tools show ads, these school pages do not.
Ontario codes are specific expectations, for example E2.5. BC has no item codes, so BC cards name the course and the curriculum element.
Codes and course names from The Ontario Curriculum (© King's Printer for Ontario) and the BC Curriculum (© Province of British Columbia). Outcomes and activities are our own words. Orbital Radar is not affiliated with or endorsed by either ministry.
Know a better fit for your class, or a topic we have missed? Tell us and we will add it.
Share this page with one link: orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc
Orbital Radar. (2026, November 4). Space for Schools: British Columbia. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc
“Space for Schools: British Columbia.” Orbital Radar, 4 Nov. 2026, orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc. Accessed 5 Nov. 2026.
Orbital Radar (2026) Space for Schools: British Columbia. Available at: https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc (Accessed: 5 November 2026).
Orbital Radar. “Space for Schools: British Columbia.” Last modified November 4, 2026. https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc.
@misc{orbitalradar_schools_ca_bc,
author = {{Orbital Radar}},
title = {Space for Schools: British Columbia},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
howpublished = {\url{https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc}},
url = {https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-05}
}TY - ELEC AU - Orbital Radar, TI - Space for Schools: British Columbia PY - 2026 DA - 2026/11/04 PB - Orbital Radar UR - https://orbitalradar.com/schools/ca/bc Y2 - 2026/11/05 LA - en-CA ER -
Live figures change, so keep the date you accessed the page. How to cite Orbital Radar