The people of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory create, manage, and operate NASA projects of exploration throughout our solar system and beyond.
Basics of Space Flight is a tutorial designed primarily to help operations people identify the range of concepts associated with deep space missions, and grasp the relationships among them. It also enjoys popularity with college and high-school students, as well as faculty, and people everywhere who are interested in interplanetary space flight.
This website attempts to offer a broad scope, but limited depth, as a robust framework to accommodate further training or investigation. Many other resources are available for delving into each of the topics related here; indeed, any one of them can involve a lifelong career of specialization. This module's purpose is met if the participant learns the scope of concepts that apply to interplanetary space exploration, and how the relationships among them work.
Basics of Space Flight is intended to be used online via the worldwide web (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics). Links to external sites provide further depth to many topics. There are interactive quizzes to let you check your own progress. No records are kept. Caltech does not offer academic credit for this training.
Interplanetary exploration begins . . .
