Matched to the statutory Northern Ireland Curriculum: The World Around Us at Key Stages 1 and 2, and Science and Technology at Key Stage 3. Its statements are not numbered, so each card names the strand or heading.
Curriculum links last reviewed November 2026.
How to tell a plane, a planet, a satellite and a star apart.
sort lights in the night sky into natural ones and ones made by people, and say which give out their own light.
Show four mystery lights on the board. The class votes on each one, then checks the answer with the guide.
A live 3D Moon, lit the way it is right now.
notice that the Moon seems to change shape from night to night, and record what they see.
Look at today's Moon on the globe. Each child draws the real Moon at home on three nights, then the class compares.
A live map of the solar system, with every working deep-space spacecraft where it is today.
describe our place in the universe: the Earth among the planets, and how far our furthest spacecraft have gone.
Find the Earth on the map, then the spacecraft furthest away. Which planets has it passed on its way out?
Every upcoming eclipse, and how much of the Sun will be covered from your town.
explain that a solar eclipse is the Moon's shadow falling on the Earth.
Look up the 2 August 2027 eclipse for Belfast, then model it with a torch, a football and a tennis ball.
Where the ISS is right now, and how fast it is going.
use the Earth's spin to explain day and night, by watching the line between them move across the map.
Put the tracker on the board at the start and end of the lesson. Mark the edge of the night side each time. Which way has it moved, and why?
Where the Starlink internet satellites are right now.
explain how satellites link people around the world for news, calls and the internet.
How many Starlink satellites are up today? List three things at home that might use a satellite.
How far each spacecraft is, and how long its signal takes to reach us.
use the light-year to describe distances in space, starting with how long a message takes to reach Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth on 18 November 2026. Light travels about 300,000 km every second: how far is that in km?
Real-time 3D globes of the Moon, Mars and the Sun.
explain why their weight would change on the Moon and on Mars while their mass stays the same.
Pupils work out their weight on the Moon (g is about 1.6 N/kg) and on Mars (about 3.7 N/kg), then spin each globe.
Where the tracked junk in orbit is, and how crowded each height has become.
explore an ethical question raised by space science: who should be responsible for the junk left in orbit?
Show the debris map. Groups argue: should the countries that launched the most pay for the clean-up?
Where the GPS satellites are right now.
investigate the science behind satnav: satellites about 20,000 km up sending timed radio signals.
How many GPS satellites are there, and why does a phone need signals from at least four?
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.
Orby's Space Academy uses US spelling.
Know a better fit for your year group, or a topic we have missed? Tell us and we will add it.
Share this page with one link: orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni
Orbital Radar. (2026, November 4). Northern Ireland: primary and KS3. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni
“Northern Ireland: primary and KS3.” Orbital Radar, 4 Nov. 2026, orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni. Accessed 4 Nov. 2026.
Orbital Radar (2026) Northern Ireland: primary and KS3. Available at: https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni (Accessed: 4 November 2026).
Orbital Radar. “Northern Ireland: primary and KS3.” Last modified November 4, 2026. https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni.
@misc{orbitalradar_schools_uk_ni,
author = {{Orbital Radar}},
title = {Northern Ireland: primary and KS3},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
howpublished = {\url{https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni}},
url = {https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni},
urldate = {2026-11-04},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-04}
}TY - ELEC AU - Orbital Radar, TI - Northern Ireland: primary and KS3 PY - 2026 DA - 2026/11/04 PB - Orbital Radar UR - https://orbitalradar.com/schools/uk/ni Y2 - 2026/11/04 LA - en-GB ER -
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