Planets & Moons
Planets travel in this type of path, according to Kepler’s First Law.
What is an ellipse?
NASA’s crewed missions to land humans on the Moon during the 1960s and 70s were part of this program.
What is the Apollo program?
The process that powers stars involves fusing lighter elements into heavier ones, releasing energy.
What is nuclear fusion?
This nearby galaxy, located in the Local Group, is on a collision course with the Milky Way.
What is the Andromeda Galaxy?
This boundary around a black hole marks the point of no return.
What is the event horizon?
This planet gets its color from iron oxide in its soil.
What is Mars?
The International Space Station is a joint project of five main agencies. Name any two.
What are NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, JAXA, and CSA.
A star spends most of its life in this long-lasting phase, where hydrogen is fused into helium.
What is the main sequence?
This is the approximate diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy, in light years.
What is 100,000 light-years?
This is the speed of light (rounded) in meters per second.
What is 300,000,000 meters per second?
Saturn’s largest moon, it has lakes and rivers of liquid methane.
What is Titan?
He was the second human to ever step foot on the moon.
Who is Buzz Aldrin?
This closest star system to the Sun contains the star Proxima Centauri.
What is Alpha Centauri?
Galaxies like the Milky Way, which have a central bulge and arms that wind outward, are classified as this type.
What is a Spiral Galaxy?
This term refers to the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.
What is the habitable zone?
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is believed to contain this beneath its icy crust.
What is a subsurface ocean?
In 1961, this Soviet cosmonaut became the first human to orbit Earth.
Who is Yuri Gagarin?
The bright red star in Orion, often used to identify the constellation, is this supergiant.
What is Betelgeuse?
Most of a galaxy’s mass is made of this invisible substance that interacts through gravity but not light.
What is dark matter?
Earth’s axis is tilted by approximately this many degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun.
What is 23.5 degrees?
This is Jupiter's largest moon and the largest moon in the Solar System.
What is Ganymede?
She became the first American woman in space in 1983 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
Who is Sally Ride?
This brightest star in the night sky is part of the constellation Canis Major.; also known as the "Dog Star".
What is Sirius?
At the center of the Milky Way Galaxy lies this enormous object with gravity so strong that not even light can escape it.
Sagittarius A* Supermassive Black Hole
These events occur twice each year, and are when day and night are nearly equal all over the world.
What are equinoxes?