Kids News

Since January 21, 2025, six planets have been visibly aligned across the night sky. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn can be seen with the naked eye, while Uranus and Neptune require a powerful telescope. This "planetary parade" is expected to get even more spectacular in February....

A rocket built by students at the University of Southern California (USC) Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL) has shattered a 20-year record. Aftershock II, launched from Nevada's Black Rock Desert on October 20, 2024, reached an altitude of 470,000 feet (143.3 km). This was 90,000 feet (27.4 km) higher than the previous amateur rocket altitude record of 380,000 feet (115.8 km). It was set by the Civilian Space eXploration Team’s GoFast rocket in 2004....

With Christmas just around the corner, your neighborhood is likely aglow with beautiful lights. But those displays pale in comparison to nature's dazzling light show — the Geminids. Nicknamed the "900-pound gorilla of meteor showers" by NASA, the Geminids outshine others with dust streams that are 5 to 500 times more massive. The "shooting stars" are also easier to spot because they travel through the skies at about 22 miles (35 km) per second. This is about half the speed of the Perseid meteors, which zip by at about 37 miles (60 km) per second every year in August....

LignoSat, the world’s first satellite made mostly from wood, reached the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX cargo capsule on November 5, 2024. The palm-sized satellite, named after the Latin word for “wood," will be launched from the ISS into Earth’s orbit later this month. Its mission is to determine if wood can withstand the harsh conditions of space. If successful, LignoSat could pave the way for more environmentally friendly spacecraft designs....

NASA’s latest mission takes the search for life to new frontiers — this time to Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa. On October 14, 2024, the Europa Clipper spacecraft launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to uncover the secrets of this distant moon....

Planetary rings are a natural feature of the larger outer planets like Jupiter and Neptune, but none are as spectacular as Saturn's. However, in March and November 2025, these majestic rings will not be visible to observers on Earth. Fortunately, this rare event is only an optical illusion. It is caused by the orientation of Saturn's thin rings and the planet's tilt relative to Earth. The last time this occurred was in 2009....

On October 2, 2024, a few lucky skygazers witnessed the Sun transform into a stunning "ring of fire" in the sky. The annular solar eclipse's narrow path, which began in the Pacific Ocean and ended in the Atlantic Ocean, tracked far from land. As a result, it was visible only to about 175,000 people worldwide....

Get ready for a rare celestial event! This weekend, our planet will capture a temporary "mini-moon" in the form of a small asteroid called 2024 PT5. This tiny space rock will enter Earth's orbit on September 29, 2024. However, unlike our permanent Moon, which has been with us for billions of years, 2024 PT5 will only be around for eight weeks....

SpaceX is no stranger to making history. It was the first private spaceflight company to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and the first to develop a reusable rocket booster. On September 15, 2024, SpaceX reached a new milestone with the successful completion of Polaris Dawn, the first of three commercial space missions under the Polaris program. This five-day flight saw a crew of all civilian astronauts set several space altitude records and conduct a pioneering spacewalk....