Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
On Mars, the sky appears reddish during the day but sunsets look blue — the opposite of Earth.
The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and is roughly halfway through its life.
The largest known reservoir of water is in space — a quasar holds 140 trillion times the water in all of Earth's oceans.
There are an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe — far more than the number of people on Earth.
The Sun contains about 99.86% of all the mass in our solar system, making all the planets, moons, and asteroids a tiny fraction.
Mercury rotates so slowly that one full day on Mercury (sunrise to sunrise) takes about 176 Earth days — longer than two Mercury years.
Mars has two small moons called Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is slowly getting closer to Mars and will eventually crash into it or break apart.
Both Voyager spacecraft carry a golden record containing sounds, images, and music from Earth, in case they are ever found by intelligent life.
Astronomers estimate that our Milky Way galaxy alone contains at least 100 billion planets.
The Moon experiences moonquakes, which can last up to 10 minutes — much longer than most earthquakes on Earth.