Space quiz for kids

Mercury → Venus → Earth → Mars. Venus and Mars are Earth's next-door neighbours.

Jupiter. The Great Red Spot is a storm that has been swirling for well over 150 years.

True. The Moon spins once each time it circles Earth, so the same side always faces us.

True. With no wind or rain, the astronauts' footprints are still there.

Mars. Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021, carrying a little helicopter called Ingenuity.

True. Mars is covered in iron-rich dust that has rusted, like an old bike left out in the rain.

Gravity. The Sun's gravity pulls on every planet and keeps each one on its path.

False. Since 2006, Pluto has been called a dwarf planet.

Mars → Venus → Neptune → Uranus → Saturn. Uranus is slightly wider than Neptune, but Neptune is heavier.

Earth spinning. When your side of Earth faces the Sun it's daytime. When it turns away, it's night.

False. From the Moon, astronauts could pick out oceans and clouds, but no buildings or walls at all.

Mars. Olympus Mons on Mars is about two and a half times as tall as Mount Everest.

The Moon blocks the Sun. Never look straight at the Sun, even during an eclipse. It can badly hurt your eyes.

Earth's shadow. In a total lunar eclipse, the Moon can turn a coppery red.

Between Mars and Jupiter. Despite what films show, the asteroid belt is mostly empty space. Spacecraft have flown through it safely many times.

The Milky Way. The Milky Way holds more than 100 billion stars, and the Sun is just one of them.

Orion. Look for three bright stars in a row. They make up Orion's Belt.

True. That's fast enough for the crew to see about 16 sunrises every day.

First satellite → First person in space → First people on the Moon → Hubble launches. The first satellite and the first people on the Moon were less than 12 years apart.

False. Plenty of stars are smaller than the Sun, but some giant stars are hundreds of times wider.

An astronomer. Astronomers use telescopes on the ground and out in space to study the sky.

A galaxy. There are billions of galaxies in the universe, each one a gigantic family of stars.

Space dust burning up. Most shooting stars are made by specks of space dust, many no bigger than a grain of sand.

Voyager 1. Voyager 1 launched in 1977. It has left the Sun's bubble and entered interstellar space.

True. So when you look at a sunset, you're seeing the Sun as it was about 8 minutes ago.

Ice, rock and dust. Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs.

Polaris. Polaris sits almost directly above the North Pole, so it barely seems to move all night.

Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong down the ladder about 20 minutes after him.