What is the closest star to Earth?: The Sun
Which planet is closest to the Sun?: Mercury
Which planet is the hottest?: Venus
Which planet is called the Red Planet?: Mars
Which planet is the largest?: Jupiter
Which planet has the most famous rings?: Saturn
Which planet spins on its side?: Uranus
Which planet is the farthest from the Sun?: Neptune
How many planets are in our solar system?: Eight
What is the order of the planets?: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
What is the Moon?: Earth's natural satellite
How long does the Moon take to go around Earth?: About 27 days
Who was the first person on the Moon?: Neil Armstrong, in 1969
What is the Milky Way?: Our home galaxy
What is a galaxy?: A huge group of stars, gas and dust
What is a light-year?: The distance light travels in one year
What is a comet?: An icy body that grows a glowing tail near the Sun
What is an asteroid?: A rocky object that orbits the Sun
What is a meteor?: A streak of light when space rock burns in the air
What is a meteorite?: A space rock that lands on Earth
What is the Great Red Spot?: A giant storm on Jupiter
What is a black hole?: A place where gravity is so strong that light cannot escape
What is a supernova?: The huge explosion of a dying star
What is a constellation?: A pattern of stars, like the Big Dipper
What is the North Star?: Polaris, which stays nearly in the same place in the northern sky
What is an eclipse of the Sun?: When the Moon blocks the Sun's light from Earth
What is a lunar eclipse?: When Earth's shadow falls on the Moon
What causes day and night?: Earth spinning on its axis
What causes seasons?: Earth's tilt as it goes around the Sun
How long is a year on Earth?: About 365 days
What was the first animal to orbit Earth?: A dog named Laika, in 1957
What was the first artificial satellite?: Sputnik 1, launched in 1957
What is the ISS?: The International Space Station, where astronauts live and work
Who was the first person in space?: Yuri Gagarin, in 1961
What is NASA?: The United States space agency
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?: A telescope that orbits Earth and takes sharp pictures of space
What is the James Webb Space Telescope?: An infrared space telescope launched in 2021
What are Mars rovers?: Robot vehicles that explore Mars
Which planet has a day longer than its year?: Venus
Which planet has the most moons known?: Saturn has the most confirmed moons
What are Jupiter's four big moons called?: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto
Which is the largest moon in the solar system?: Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter
What is Pluto now called?: A dwarf planet
What is the asteroid belt?: A ring of rocky objects between Mars and Jupiter
What makes the Sun shine?: Nuclear fusion in its core
What color are the hottest stars?: Blue-white
What is the Sun made of?: Mostly hydrogen and helium gas
How long does sunlight take to reach Earth?: About 8 minutes
What is the Big Bang?: The idea that the universe began about 13.8 billion years ago from a hot, dense start
What is gravity?: The pull between objects with mass
Why do astronauts float?: They are in free fall around the Earth
What is the Apollo program?: NASA's program that landed people on the Moon (1969-1972)
What is the Space Shuttle?: A reusable NASA spacecraft that flew from 1981 to 2011
What is a rocket's fuel for?: To push it up fast enough to escape Earth's gravity
What is Halley's Comet?: A famous comet seen from Earth about every 76 years
What is the Big Dipper?: Seven bright stars shaped like a ladle
What are Orion's belt stars?: Three bright stars in a row in the constellation Orion
What is the Aurora?: Colored lights in the sky near the poles, caused by particles from the Sun
What is the solar system?: The Sun and everything that orbits it
What is a satellite?: An object that orbits a larger one
What is an astronaut?: A person trained to travel in space

Free flashcards from Peabody at peabody.kids/flashcards/fun-space-facts