Kids News

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has been pledging to send tourists to space ever since he started the company in 2002. On September 17, 2018, the visionary came one step closer to fulfilling his promise by signing up his first passenger – Japanese billionaire and entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. If all goes according to plan, in 2023, Maezawa will become the first passenger and private astronaut to travel to the Moon. He will also join the elite group of just 24 humans who have been fortunate enough to see Earth’s satellite up close....

NASA’s ambitious mission to “touch” the Sun got underway at 3:31 a.m. EST on August 12 with the launch of the Parker Solar Probe from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Within six weeks, the spacecraft, which is currently traveling at 39,500 miles per hour, will conduct the first of seven flybys of Venus and use the planet’s gravitational pull to catapult itself closer to the Sun. The process, known as gravity assist, is instrumental in the probe’s mission to reach our fiery star....

The quest to discover life outside of Earth has spanned decades and a multitude of galaxies. However, while breakthroughs like the discovery of liquid water on Mars and “Earth-like” exoplanets have raised hopes about the existence of alien life, the distance has made it hard to prove. Now, scientists believe the extraterrestrial life we have been seeking for so long may be on the planet closest to us — Venus....

Tonight, (May 8) Earth will pass between the sun and Jupiter, putting our solar system’s largest planet directly in opposition to the star. This means that Jupiter will rise shortly after the sun sets and stay up all night, making it the best time of year to see the massive gaseous world. While the planet will shine its brightest tonight, it will not reach its closest distance — 409 million miles (658 million kms) — to Earth until May 10....

Every month, NASA Observatory’s Earth Matters challenges viewers to describe a mysterious satellite image, the answer to which is posted on the website a week later. However, even the experts could not come up with a definitive explanation for the April puzzler, a photo featuring mysterious ice circles in the Arctic....

Experts estimate that by the year 2050, the world’s population will swell from the current 7.3 billion to over 9.5 billion, with just nine countries accounting for half the growth. If accurate, conventional farming methods, which revolve around growing one or two crops annually, will be unable to sustain the increase in food demand. Now, some Australian scientists may have found a way to cost-effectively accelerate crop yields with a technique called speed breeding, inspired by NASA’s experiments to grow wheat in space....

Marvel’s Black Panther superhero T’Challa, the king of East African dynasty Wakanda, is not the only one ascending to the throne. Since its February 16 release, the film has collected over $1.2 billion at the box office worldwide, making it the 14th highest grossing movie ever. It is also the fourth highest grossing superhero movie, surpassed only by Iron Man 3 ($1.215b in 2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4b in 2015) and The Avengers ($1.5b in 2012)....

Always wanted to be part of an important space mission? Now, thanks to NASA’s recently launched “Hot Ticket” program, you can get your “moment in the sun” — literally, by simply submitting your name. The space agency will put all the names received on a microchip which will accompany the Parker Solar Probe on its mission to observe our fiery star’s atmosphere from up close – something that has never been attempted before....

After almost a year of orbiting the sun, on September 22, 2017, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer) made its closest flyby of Earth. Moving at speeds of about 19,000 mph, the spacecraft passed within 11,000 miles of the planet’s surface just south of Chile, before zooming over Antarctica....