Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
NASA's Kepler space telescope, operating from 2009 to 2018, discovered more than 2,600 confirmed exoplanets by detecting the tiny dips in starlight caused when a planet passes in front of its star.
The Moon is thought to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized body called Theia smashed into the early Earth, sending debris into orbit that gradually clumped together.
For the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that light could not travel freely. It was completely opaque, like a thick fog.
The craters on the Moon are preserved for billions of years because there is no wind, water, or tectonic activity to erode them. Some craters were formed over 4 billion years ago.
The first photograph of a black hole was taken in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope — a planet-sized array of eight radio observatories working together — capturing the black hole at the centre of galaxy M87.
More than half of all stars in the Milky Way exist as binary systems — two stars orbiting each other. Our Sun is unusual in being a solitary star.
Saturn has a mysterious hexagonal storm at its north pole — a six-sided jet stream about 32,000 kilometres wide that has persisted for at least 40 years.
On Earth, sound travels about 343 metres per second in air — but on a moon or asteroid with rock underfoot, seismic vibrations travel several kilometres per second through the ground.
The surface of the Moon is covered in a layer of fine, sharp, glassy dust called regolith, created by billions of years of meteorite impacts. Apollo astronauts found it clung to everything.
Planets form from swirling discs of gas and dust around young stars. Earth took roughly 50–100 million years to grow to its current size through a process of collisions and accretion.