The NAEE web team thinks that it’s the environment on planet earth, and our dependency on it for the quality of our lives, that should be our most pressing concerns, given its parlous state.
However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t think about what’s going on outside the biosphere. Here’s an animation from the European Space Agency illustrating Andreas Mogensen’s preparation for his mission to the International Space station in September.
You can find ESA’s schools materials here, and this is the live feed from the space station c/o NASA.
Of course, many of the activities of those on the space station are very much about live on earth. Here is a summary (from NASA) of the experimental investigations that happen on the space station. Of particular interest are those that relate to ‘earth science’, about which NASA says:
“The presence of the space station in low-Earth orbit provides a unique vantage point for collecting Earth and space science data. From an average altitude of about 400 km, details in such features as glaciers, agricultural fields, cities, and coral reefs taken from the ISS can be layered with other sources of data, such as orbiting satellites, to compile the most comprehensive information available.”
Here is a list (with links) of all these investigations, and this is a video summary of the experiments that Alex Gerst (a European crew member) performed in 2014. Finally, this is a Wikipedia summary of the European programme for life and physical sciences in space.