Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the INSPIRE Online Learning Community!

You can track Santa's flight tonight on the NORAD Santa Tracker.

The first Christmas aboard the International Space Station occurred in 2000 with the Expedition One crew. Astronaut Bill Shepherd and Cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev spent a quiet Christmas Day opening gifts and talking to their families.

Astronaut John Blaha celebrated the holiday season in orbit aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1996.

In 1973, Skylab 4 crewmembers created a 'Christmas tree' from discarded food cans.

The first people in space at Christmas were Borman, Lovell and Anders, who orbited the moon in Apollo-8 in 1968.

NASA EDGE takes a unique look in and around the greatest space program on the planet.

NASA EDGE is a public outreach vodcast sponsored by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and based out of the Exploration and Space Operations Directorate at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

NASA EDGE vodcasts can be downloaded from the NASA website and from iTunes.

In its first year of production, NASA EDGE was downloaded over 450,000 times.

As of June 2010, NASA EDGE has produced 53 vodcasts.

NASA EDGE premiered on March 18, 2007.

The Dawn spacecraft also will be used to measure gravity fields,
thereby revealing details of these asteroids’ interiors.

By investigating two very different asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, the Dawn mission seeks to unlock some of the mysteries of planetary formation.

The Dawn mission marks the first time a spacecraft will
orbit a body in the main asteroid belt and the first time
a spacecraft will orbit two targets, enabling a detailed
and intensive study of both.

Aboard the Dawn spacecraft, the science payload
consists of two cameras, a visible and infrared mapping
spectrometer to reveal the surface minerals, and a gamma
ray and neutron spectrometer to determine the elements
that make up the outer parts of the asteroids.

Dawn’s journey to the asteroid belt, spanning about eight years from launch to completion of data return, is made possible by ion propulsion.

The top level question that Dawn addresses is the role of size and water in determining the evolution of the planets.

Kennedy Space Center shares land with the 140,000 acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The central Florida area receives more lightning strikes than any other place in the U.S., causing NASA to spend millions of dollars to avoid strikes during launches.

Robert Cabana, the current director of Kennedy Space center, is an astronaut who has flown four missions on the Space Shuttle.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is visited by 1.5 million guests each year.