Kids News

There are numerous meteor showers throughout the year. However, few are as popular, or as reliable, as the Perseids. The shower has been producing about a dozen meteors an hour since mid-July. But the best time to see them will be on the night of August 12 into the morning of August 13, 2026. That is when the number of meteors will increase sharply to between 50 and 100 an hour. This year, the peak of the shower coincides with a new moon. This means the meteors will be easier to spot in the dark skies....

Astronomers have made a surprising discovery in the Kuiper Belt, a frigid region of space beyond Neptune. A small icy rock named 2002 XV93 has been found to have its own atmosphere. This is unexpected because the object is only about 310 miles (500 km) wide. That is about seven times smaller than our Moon. Usually, an object that small does not have enough gravity to hold onto gases. They simply drift away into space....

On April 1, Artemis II's Orion spacecraft blasted off into space for a trip around the Moon. Inside were four astronauts and an adorable stuffed toy named Rise. The tiny plush had a simple, but important job — to float when the spacecraft reached zero gravity. This gave the crew an easy, visual signal that it was safe to unbuckle their seatbelts....

NASA is taking the next step toward returning humans to the Moon with the Artemis II mission. Sometime during the first week of April 2026, the Orion spacecraft will carry four astronauts on a journey around the Moon before returning safely to Earth. The flight will test Orion and its systems for future missions that aim to land astronauts on the lunar surface again. The last time astronauts walked on the Moon was during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972....