Planets
This planet is nearest the Sun and has very hot days and very cold nights
What is Mercury?
The Sun is a huge ball made mostly of this gas that fuels nuclear fusion.
What is Hydrogen
Earth's natural satellite is called this.
What is the Moon
The force that pulls objects toward Earth’s center is called this.
What is Gravity
The first human to walk on the Moon in 1969 during Apollo 11.
Who is Neil Armstrong.
This gas giant has a prominent ring system and is the second-largest planet in our solar system.
What is Saturn
The apparent brightness of a star seen from Earth depends mainly on its actual brightness and this other factor named in the NGSS standard.
What is Distance from Earth (relative distance)
These small bodies orbit some gas giants and form wide flat features made of ice and rock.
What is Rings
The path an object follows as it moves around another object in space is called this.
What is Orbit
These unmanned vehicles study planets up close and send data back to Earth; examples include Voyager and Cassini (give the general term).
Space probes or robotic probes.
This planet is known as the "Red Planet" because of iron-rich dust on its surface.
What is Mars
The layer of the Sun we see as its surface is called this.
What is Photosphere
This large moon of Jupiter is the biggest in the solar system and is even larger than the planet Mercury.
What is Ganymede
Earth spins once on its axis in about this amount of time, causing day and night.
What is About 24 hours (one day)
This robotic rover landed on Mars in 2012 and explored Gale Crater (name the rover)
What is Curiosity
This planet has a thick layer of clouds and rotates very slowly; its surface is hotter than Mercury's even though it is farther from the Sun.
What is Venus
The Sun produces energy by fusing hydrogen into this element.
What is Helium
A moon that always shows the same face to its planet is said to be in this kind of rotation-synchronous state.
What is Tidal locking (synchronous rotation)
The combined motion of the moon orbiting Earth and Earth orbiting the Sun leads to predictable patterns such as this monthly event when the moon blocks the Sun from view (in some places).
What is Solar eclipse.
spacecraft that returns samples from another body brings material back to Earth; the Japanese Hayabusa and NASA OSIRIS-REx are examples of missions that aimed to collect these from this small solar system bodies called _____.
What is Asteroids (or "asteroid samples" / small bodies such as asteroids).
These two planets are often called the "ice giants" because they have interiors rich in water, ammonia, and methane ices.
What is Uranus and Neptune
This term describes a group of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity; our Sun is part of one called the Milky Way.
What is Galaxy (the Milky Way)
Saturn's moon with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere and hydrocarbon lakes is called this.
What is Titan.
Name one scientific reason (connected to NGSS 5-PS3-1 or 5-PS2-1 concepts) why studying the Sun and solar radiation is important for understanding energy on Earth and for planning human space travel.
Answers will very.