Skip to content
Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words

Why I love space

The International Space Station with its newly attached Destiny laboratory, photographed from space shuttle Atlantis above a cloud-covered Earth. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Space" page.
The International Space Station with its newly attached Destiny laboratory, photographed from space shuttle Atlantis above a cloud-covered Earth. NASA · Public domain
  • It is really out there and it is really that big.
  • People built machines that went and looked.
  • There are places nobody has ever seen.

What it really is

Space is everything past the air, and we have sent real machines into it.

Three things to try today

  1. Find out what is above you right now.
  2. Look up tonight for five minutes.
  3. Draw what you saw.
Astronaut Suni Williams, wearing a virtual-reality headset and gloves, practices spacewalking in the Virtual Reality Lab at Johnson Space Center. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Space" page.
Astronaut Suni Williams, wearing a virtual-reality headset and gloves, practices spacewalking in the Virtual Reality Lab at Johnson Space Center. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

Scale is the hardest idea. Distance models with household objects do more than any number can.

Why I love space — 4,299 places across America

Alabama (87)
Alaska (33)
Arizona (43)
Arkansas (86)
California (273)
Colorado (85)
Connecticut (27)
D.C. (1)
Delaware (5)
Florida (158)
Georgia (185)
Hawaii (8)
Idaho (54)
Illinois (155)
Indiana (117)
Iowa (112)
Kansas (116)
Kentucky (129)
Louisiana (81)
Maine (21)
Maryland (35)
Massachusetts (53)
Michigan (120)
Minnesota (111)
Mississippi (88)
Missouri (131)
Montana (61)
Nebraska (97)
Nevada (22)
New Hampshire (13)
New Jersey (45)
New Mexico (40)
New York (90)
North Carolina (127)
North Dakota (57)
Ohio (124)
Oklahoma (88)
Oregon (51)
Pennsylvania (88)
Rhode Island (6)
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (5)
South Carolina (65)
South Dakota (68)
Tennessee (114)
Texas (340)
Utah (48)
Vermont (16)
Virginia (158)
Washington (77)
Washington, D.C. (1)
West Virginia (64)
Wisconsin (95)
Wyoming (25)

Love something else too

All 51 things to love · Girls are great at math