LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
Exploring Space and Your Solar System Model
For thousands of years, people could only look at space from the ground. Today we send telescopes, robots and astronauts into space to explore. In this final lesson you will learn about some amazing space missions, and then build your own model of the solar system.
How we explore space
Telescopes
A telescope makes faraway objects look bigger and clearer. Some telescopes are on mountaintops, and some are in space, above Earth’s blurry air. Space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope have taken incredible pictures of distant galaxies.
Astronauts
In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel into space. In 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the Apollo 11 mission, became the first people to walk on the Moon.
Today, astronauts from many countries live and work on the International Space Station. It orbits about 400 kilometres above Earth and circles the planet roughly every 90 minutes, so the crew can see around 16 sunrises a day!
Robots and probes
Robots can go where it is too dangerous or too far for people. Rovers drive across Mars studying rocks. Probes like Voyager 1, launched in 1977, have travelled beyond the planets. Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth.
| Explorer | What it does |
|---|---|
| Space telescope | takes pictures of far-off stars and galaxies |
| Astronauts | do experiments and repairs in space |
| Rover | drives on another world’s surface |
| Probe | flies past or orbits planets and moons |
Project: build a solar system model
Making a model helps you remember the planets and see how different they are.
What you need
Paper or card, scissors, colouring pens, string or tape, and a long wall or corridor.
Steps
- Draw a big Sun on one sheet of paper and place it at one end.
- Draw and cut out the eight planets. Make Jupiter and Saturn the biggest, then Uranus and Neptune, then Earth and Venus, then Mars, and Mercury the smallest.
- Colour them: grey Mercury, yellowish Venus, blue and green Earth, red Mars, striped Jupiter, ringed Saturn, blue-green Uranus and deep blue Neptune.
- Place them in order. Put the four rocky planets fairly close to the Sun, then leave bigger and bigger gaps for the giants.
- On the back of each planet, write one fact you learned.
Example
Maya used her hallway. She put the Sun at the front door, the rocky planets within a few steps, Jupiter halfway down the hall and Neptune all the way at the back door. “Now I see how far away the giants are!” she said.
Key takeaways
- Telescopes, astronauts, rovers and probes help us explore space.
- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the Moon in 1969.
- The International Space Station circles Earth about every 90 minutes.
- The outer planets are much farther apart than the inner ones.
Practice
Build your solar system model and write one fact on each planet. Then answer: which planet would you most like to explore, and why?
Answer: any planet is a great choice if your reason uses a real fact, for example “Saturn, because I want to see its rings of ice and rock up close.”