Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
Mars has two small, lumpy moons called Phobos and Deimos. They are shaped like potatoes and are thought to be captured asteroids. Phobos is so close to Mars that it orbits the planet faster than Mars rotates!
NASA's Artemis program is working to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. The program aims to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon as a stepping stone for future missions to Mars.
In about 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and expand into a red giant star, growing so large it could swallow Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Earth. After that, it will shrink into a tiny white dwarf.
The universe has a large-scale structure called the cosmic web — a vast network of filaments made of dark matter and gas that connects galaxy clusters like threads in a giant spider's web. Most of the universe's matter lies along these filaments.
The beautiful Northern and Southern Lights (auroras) are created when particles blasted from the Sun — called solar wind — collide with gases in Earth's atmosphere. Different gases glow in different colors: green from oxygen, red and purple from nitrogen.
Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star that is so enormous it could swallow all the planets out to Jupiter's orbit. If it were placed at the center of our solar system, it would extend beyond the orbit of Mars.
About 27% of the universe is made of something called dark matter, which cannot be seen or detected directly — scientists only know it exists because of the gravitational pull it exerts on visible matter. Another 68% is dark energy, and only about 5% is normal matter.
The Moon has almost no atmosphere, which means there is no weather and no wind. Footprints left by Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s are still perfectly preserved on the lunar surface today.
Pulsars are a type of neutron star that spin incredibly fast and emit beams of radio waves like a lighthouse. The fastest known pulsar spins 716 times per second — faster than a kitchen blender!
Gravity is not exactly the same everywhere on Earth. Because Earth bulges slightly at the equator, gravity is slightly weaker there than at the poles. Astronauts on the ISS experience microgravity because they are in constant free fall around Earth.