A Virtual Field Trip to Space for Your Whole Class

01

What a virtual space field trip with LIFTONAUT looks like

1. Before class, you book a private rocket, pick the tour and the departure time, and name the mission.
2. At the start of the lesson, students open the link on their devices, enter the code and choose a seat; you see the passenger list.
3. The flight: the GO/NO-GO poll, launch, orbit and the stops of the tour, with the guide narrating and real photos on screen.
4. After landing, every student who boarded receives a certificate with their name and the mission.

It runs in a browser on laptops, tablets or classroom computers, and a whole class can connect from the same school network.

02

Private rocket: one link and one code for up to 20 students

Students need no account and no email address: an adult books, and students board with the link and the code. As the organizer you run Mission Control: you see who is on board, admit or remove passengers, pause the crew chat and start the countdown when the class is ready.

The chat removes links, emails and phone numbers automatically, and students who join without an account are treated as minors, so nobody sees anyone else's photo.

03

Which tour fits which grade

Primary: the planets and the Moon

The Moon tour, about 10 minutes, fits a single lesson: the launch, orbit, the Moon's craters and the six Apollo landing sites.

Middle school: orbits, gravity and scale

The Mars tour or the Giants show why orbits take speed, how small the planets are compared with the distances between them, and how long light needs to cross them.

High school: Mars, giant planets and real mission data

The Grand Tour, about 26 minutes, visits every planet and Pluto and makes a good base for a project on missions such as Voyager, Cassini, Juno and New Horizons.

04

Curriculum links: planets, orbits, gravity and scale

The flights support topics found in most science curricula. In the United States they connect to the NGSS middle school standards on the role of gravity in the motions within the solar system (MS-ESS1-2) and on scale properties of solar system objects (MS-ESS1-3). In England they fit the Year 5 Earth and space unit: the movement of the Earth and planets relative to the Sun, and of the Moon relative to the Earth.

• Physics: gravity, free fall in orbit, orbital speed (7.7 km/s at 400 km), Max-Q, why the flame widens in a vacuum.
• Earth science: the layers of the atmosphere, why the sky is blue, Earth at night, the orbit's ground track.
• Astronomy: the order and sizes of the planets, real positions for the day of the lesson, moons, light travel time.

05

Questions to ask your class after the flight

1. Why did the sky turn black during the climb? (Above a few tens of kilometers there is too little air to scatter sunlight.)
2. Why does everything float in orbit, if gravity there is still about 90% of Earth's? (The ship and everything in it are falling around Earth together.)
3. Why do rockets launch toward the east? (Earth's rotation gives them extra speed, about 400 m/s at our launch site.)
4. Why are there no flames or sounds in space like in the movies? (There is no air to carry sound, and the plume spreads out in the vacuum.)
5. How long did the light from Saturn take to reach Earth on the day of your flight? (More than an hour.)

06

Prices for classes and schools

A private rocket for 20 passengers costs 30% less per seat than individual tickets. All prices come from the booking system:

A smaller group can take a 10-seat private rocket at 20% off per seat. Before booking, try the free trial flight yourself.