Solar System Origins
Scientists believe the solar system formed about this many years ago.
What is 4.6 billion years ago?
Small rocky objects found mostly between Mars and Jupiter.
What are asteroids?
This planet is closest to the Sun.
What is Mercury?
The distance light travels in one year.
These launch spacecraft into space using exhaust gases.
What are rockets?
A giant cloud of gas dust, and ice that formed the solar system is called this.
What is a nebula?
These icy objects develop glowing tails near the sun.
What are comets?
This planet has a thick atmosphere, causing an extreme greenhouse effect.
What is Venus?
This instrument spreads starlight into different wavelengths.
What is a spectroscope?
This telescope orbits Earth and collects images from space.
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?
This process powers the Sun by combining atoms together.
What is nuclear fusion?
A spherical object orbiting the Sun that has not cleared nearby objects from its orbit.
What is a dwarf planet?
This planet is known for the Great Red Spot.
What is Jupiter?
A huge collection of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.
What is a galaxy?
These reusable spacecraft carried astronauts and supplies into space.
What are space shuttles?
Shock waves from this exploding star may have caused the solar system cloud to collapse.
What is a Supernova?
What are meteoroids?
This planet has rings and a moon named Titan.
What is Saturn?
The Milky Way is this type of galaxy.
What is a spiral galaxy?
This field studies the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
What is Astrobiology?
As the solar system formed, the cloud flattened into this shape.
This unit measures distances within the solar system.
What is an astronomical unit (AU)?
This blue-green planet rotates on its side like a rolling ball.
What is Uranus?
What is the Big Bang Theory?
What Space Exploration mission was considered a successful failure?
What is Apollo 13?