Do you want to learn about how the Tracking Data and Relay Satellite (TDRS) communicates through space?

How about learning while having fun?? 

We've compiled a list of websites that can help you better understand how satellites and astronauts in space send their pictures and data back down to Earth!

Space Operations Learning Center

The SOLC is a joint effort by the Goddard Space Flight Center's office of Education and NASA Headquarter's Space Communication and Navigation program to utilize the latest web and software technologies to present educational content in a fun and engaging way for all grade levels.  By using animations, streaming video, cartoon characters, audio narration, interactive games and more this website delivers knowledge about NASA and its missions through space!

The Science Channel

Big, Bigger, Biggest: Space Communication. Check out this video made by The Science Channel explaining how TDRS is helping astronauts on the International Space Station to communicate back down to Earth.

NASA's Space Place

NASA's Space Place website is a joint effort between NASA, JPL, California Institute of Technology and the International Technology and Engineering Education Association. Together they have created a space for kids of all grade levels to explore the wonders of space exploration.

The following links direct you to activites, video and online games that will help you learn more about space communications.

Link up and Listen!  Help big antennas gather data from spacecraft!

Dr. Marc answers questions about technology!  If spacecraft sent to other planets don't come back to Earth, how do we get pictures from them? Dr. Marc Rayman answers this question and many others on NASA's Space Place.

Pixel This!  Learn how pictures can be sent through space!

How to yell across the solar system.  A video explaining how data is sent through space via the electromagnetic spectrum.

How do we talk to machines? An overview of how satellites use binary code to transfer data from spacecraft to the ground.

Smithsonian Museum

TDRS on display!  Are you in the Washington D.C. area? Check out a genuine 1st generation TDRS on display in the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.